XTbe  Mt5t)om  of  tbe  Bast  Series 

Edited  by 

L.  CRANMER-BYNG 

Dr.  S.  A.  KAPADIA 


YANG   CHU'S   GARDEN 
OF    PLEASURE 


WISDOM  OF  THE  EAST 

YANG   CHU'S    GARDEN 
OF   PLEASURE 

TRANSLATED  FROM  THE  CHINESE   BY 

PROFESSOR   ANTON   FORKE,   Ph.D.,  etc. 

WITH  AN  INTRODUCTION   BY 

HUGH   CRANMER-BYNG 


NEW   YORK 

E.   P.   BUTTON   AND   COMPANY 
1912 


All  Kiohts  Ressrved 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction        .         .         .         .         .         .7 

CHAPTER 

I.  The   Vanity   of  Famb      .         .  .36 

II.  Real  and  False  Greatness     .  .     37 

III.  The  Brevity  op  Conscious  Life  .     38 

IV.  Death  the  Equaliser      .         .  .40 
V.  False  Virtues          .         .         .  .41 

VI.  The  Ideal  Life        .         .         .         .42 

VII.  Duty  to  the  Living  and  the  Dead     42 

VIII.  The  Art  of  Life      .         .         .         .43 

IX.  The  Happy  Voluptuaries         .         .     45 

X.  The  Joyous  Life  of  Tuan-mu-Shu  .     49 

XI.  The  Folly  of  Desire  for  Long  Life      51 

XII.    Self-Sacrifice  and  Self- Aggrandise- 
ment    .         .         .         .         .         .52 

XIII.  The  Vanity  of  Reputation     .         .54 

XIV.  Difficulty  and  Ease  of  Government    58 
XV.    All  Things  Pass       .         .         .         .59 

XVI.    The  Nature  of  Man         .         .  .60 

XVII.    The  Four  Chimeras  .         .  .61 

XVIII.    All  Pleasures  are  Relative    .  .     62 

XIX.    The  Wisdom  of  Contentment  .  .     63 

6 


IV1514031 


EDITORIAL  NOTE 

The  object  of  the  Editors  of  this  series  is  a  rery 
definite  one.  They  desire  above  all  things 
that,  in  their  humble  way,  these  books  shall  be 
the  ambassadors  of  good-will  and  miderstanding 
between  East  and  West — the  old  world  of  Thought 
and  the  new  of  Action.  In  this  endeavour,  and 
in  their  own  sphere,  they  are  but  followers  of  the 
highest  example  in  the  land.  They  are  confident 
that  a  deeper  knowledge  of  the  great  ideals  and 
lofty  philosophy  of  Oriental  thought  may  help 
to  a  revival  of  that  true  spirit  of  Charity  which 
neither  despises  nor  fears  the  nations  of  another 
creed  and  colour. 

L.    CRANMER-BYNG. 
S.    A.    KAPADIA. 


nobthbrook  society, 
21  Cromwell  Road, 

KENglNOTON,   S.W. 


YANG    CHU'S    GAEDEN 
OP    PLEASURE 

INTRODUCTION 

The  period  of  the  Warring  States  of  the  Western 
Chinese  Empire,  480  to  230  B.C.,  embraces  practic- 
ally (almost)  all  of  the  philosophies  of  China,  and 
is  curiously  coincident  with  the  rise  of  philosophy 
in  Greece  under  somewhat  similar  conditions. 

To  the  capital  of  Liang,  in  the  State  of  Wei, 
came  all  the  philosophers,  just  as  they  came  to 
Athens.  Here  came  Mencius,  perhaps  one  of  the 
greatest  of  the  exponents  of  Confucianism,  a  verit- 
able St.  Paul  of  the  Confucian  movement,  and  the 
chief  opponent  of  Yang  Chu.  Here  came  Chuang- 
Tzu,  most  subtle  among  the  Taoist  sophists,  Li 
Kuei  the  great  statesman  and  law-giver,  Hsiin- 
tzu  the  philosopher  of  the  doctrine  of  original 
evil,  Went-zu  the  able  follower  of  Lao-tzu,  and 
Mo-Ti  the  apostle  of  brotherly  love,  whose  name 
is  frequently  bracketed  with  Yang  Chu  in  con- 
demnation by  Mencius.  Seldom  had  any  capital 
in  the  world  attracted  so  many  profound  original 
and  subtle  thinkers  as  the  capital  of  the  State  of 
Wei,  in  the  third  and  second  centuries  before 
Christ.  The  spread  of  Christianity  in  Eastern 
Europe,  and  Confucianism  in  China,  ultimately 

7 


8  INTRODUCTION 

destroyed  or  diverted  the  philosophic  spirit,  sub- 
stituting religious  dogma  and  rites  for  philosophic 
inquiry  and  reason,  and  for  centuries  the  philo- 
sophies lay  buried  or  perished  altogether  in  the 
great  burning  of  the  books  in  213  B.C.,  or  passed, 
like  Taoism,  into  the  realms  of  rites  and  worship, 
or  were  preserved  only  in  fragmentary  form,  like 
the  single  chapter  of  the  philosophy  of  Yang  Chu, 
that  remains  imbedded  in  the  Taoist  teachings 
of  Lieh  Tzu.  But  in  the  third  and  fourth  centu- 
ries B.C.,  the  golden  period  of  Chinese  philosophy, 
the  minds  of  men  were  turned  to  the  critical 
examination  of  life.  Philosophers  rose,  exploring 
boldly  the  motives  and  mysteries  of  existence, 
gathered  around  them  disciples,  and  went  from 
court  to  court,  gaining  fresh  adherents  and  dis- 
puting with  rival  teachers  on  the  most  diverse  and 
subtle  of  subjects. 

At  the  Court  of  Liang  at  the  period  of  Yang 
Chu,  about  300  B.C.,  the  philosophers  were  treated 
as  guests  of  the  reigning  king,  who  reserved  for 
them  lodging  and  maintenance,  and  encouraged 
all  who  had  any  pretence  to  the  pursuit  of  truth 
and  wisdom.  Whether  or  not  Yang  Chu  was 
actually  a  native  of  the  Wei  State,  or  whether 
he  came  there  drawn  by  the  attraction  of  a 
critical  and  unrivalled  audience,  it  is  at  least 
certain  that  he  settled  there  as  small  proprietor, 
probably  in  the  reign  of  King  Hwei,  and  con- 
tinued there  till  his  death,  about  250  B.C.     One 


INTRODUCTION  9 

may  imagine  a  condition  of  life  in  many  respects 
somewhat  analogous  to  the  life  of  Epicurus  in  his 
famous  Athenian  Garden.  To  the  philosopher 
of  pleasure  and  contentment  came  pupils  and 
disciples,  discourses  were  held  in  much  the  same 
way  as  at  an  identical  period  discourses  were  held  in 
the  garden  at  Athens,  and  it  is  to  these  discourses, 
memorised  and  recorded  by  his  favourite  pupil 
Meng-sun-Yang,  that  we  most  probably  owe  the 
single  fragment  of  the  teaching  of  Yang  Chu  that 
remains,  a  fragment  complete  and  explicit  enough 
to  enable  us  to  form  a  clear  estimate  of  his  teach- 
ing and  philosophy. 

Of  his  personal  life,  a  little  is  to  be  gathered 
from  Chapter  XIV.,  where  in  an  amusing  inter- 
view with  the  King  of  Liang,  the  philosopher 
states  the  simple  truth  that  what  is  possible  and 
easy  to  some  men  is  difficult  and  impossible  of 
attainment  to  others,  and  that  there  is  no  more 
real  merit  in  ruling  a  kingdom  well  than  in  guiding 
a  flock  of  sheep.  From  this  chapter  we  learn 
that  he  lived  the  customary  life  of  the  Chinese 
gentleman  of  his  day.  A  wife,  a  concubine  and 
a  garden  are  mentioned,  and  in  surroundings 
quite  simple  and  unpretentious  he  found,  one  may 
imagine,  something  of  the  pleasure  and  content- 
ment of  his  philosophic  ideal. 

From  the  few  authentic  anecdotes  contained 
partly  in  the  book  of  Chuang  Tzu  and  Lieh  Tzu, 
one  may  gain  but  little  more  :    that  he  had  a 


4 


10  INTRODUCTION 

brother  called  Yang  Pu,  the  hero  of  the  delightful 
story  of  the  dog  who  failed  to  recognise  his 
master ;  and  that,  like  other  philosophers  of  the 
period,  he  travelled  frequently  through  other 
States,  taking  with  him  a  few  chosen  disciples, 
putting  up  at  wayside  inns,  expounding  his  philo- 
sophy in  strange  courts,  or  commenting  wittily 
on  the  passing  adventures  of  the  journey.  These 
few  facts  present  to  us  a  life  in  no  way  differing 
from  the  lives  of  the  majority  of  philosophers  of 
his  time,  both  in  Greece  and  China.  They  tell  us 
little,  but  they  tell  us  sufficient.  They  disclose 
a  personality  at  once  profound,  even  cynical, 
witty  and  singularly  clear-sighted. 

That  his  philosophy  fail,  i  to  find  permanent 
foothold  is  hardly  to  be  wonder^  '  at.  His  ideas 
were  too  daring,  too  subversive  of  the  accepted 
order  of  things,  to  attract  the  mass  of  people, 
who  came,  no  doubt,  to  listen  to  the  suave  and 
witty  philosopher  of  happiness  and  the  cult  of 
the  senses,  but  returned,  one  may  imagine,  with  a 
satisfied  readiness  to  their  rites  of  ancestor  worship 
or  the  cultivation  of  their  Taoist  superstitions. 
His  philosophy  had  no  place  for  rites.  It  denied 
a  ruling  spirit,  it  was  anti-deistic.  It  could 
disclose  no  signs  and  marvels.  To  the  seekers 
after  the  Taoist  secret  of  passing  invisibly  through 
the  air  he  offered  nothing  but  the  most  material 
and  mundane  of  views.  To  the  seekers  for  guid- 
ance he  offered  happiness  in  its  most  simple  form, 


INTRODUCTION  11 

and  that  at  the  expense  of  vulgar  self-assertion 
and  self-glorification.  His  adherents  could  never 
have  numbered  more  than  a  few. 

Dr.  Forke,  in  his  extremely  interesting  introduc- 
tion to  the  seventh  chapter  of  Lieh  Tzu,  which 
contains  all  that  remains  of  the  teaching  of  Yang 
Chu,  compares  his  philosophy  to  a  study  in  scarlet 
on  black,  the  scarlet  symbolic  of  the  joy  of  life, 
the  black  of  his  unyielding  pessimism,  and  at 
first  sight  the  comparison  is  so  apt  that  one  is 
inclined  to  accept  it. 

One  feels  the  curious,  almost  mephitic  pro- 
fundity of  the  sage  that  stirred  the  wrath  of  his 
Christian  commentators  almost  to  the  bounds 
of  unseemliness.  His  bland  indifference  to  virtue, 
civic  and  personal,  his  insistence  on  life  only  as  a 
means  of  separate  and  individual  expression,  his 
negation  of  self-sacrifice,  and  his  contempt  of  the 
good,  the  excellent  and  the  successful,  produce  at 
first  in  the  Western  mind  the  sense  of  a  moral 
atmosphere  dark  and  sinister  as  the  cloud  from 
which  emerges  the  evil  genii  of  the  East.  "  His 
teaching  is  quite  detestable,"  says  Dr.  Legge,  and 
elsewhere  he  refers  to  him  as  the  "  least  erected 
spirit  who  ever  professed  to  reason  concerning  the 
duties  of  life  and  man."  Balfour  in  his  Oriental 
Studies  speaks  of  "the  irreproachable  Kuan 
Chung,  who  is  made  to  utter  the  most  atrocious 
doctrines,"  and  it  is  doubtful  if  anybody  who  has 
a  preconceived  or  inherited  basis  of  morality  or 


12  INTRODUCTION 

dogma  will  cease  to  agree  with  the  two  opiniong 
quoted  above.  For  them  the  tower  of  philosophy, 
from  whence  through  many  windows  strangely 
tinted,  opaque  or  clear,  the  philosophers  view  the 
world  as  a  small  thing  viewed  with  interest  and 
careful  detachment,  must  ever  seem  something 
a  little  aloof,  a  little  repellent.  About  all  philo- 
!  \  sophy  there  lingers  the  haunting  sense  of  the 
coldness,  the  dispassion  of  the  philosopher. 
Marcus  Aurelius  will  always,  to  most  men,  seem 
j  a  little  less  than  perfectly  human,   Socrates  a 

!  little    more    than    the   perfect  doctrinaire.     The 

world  will  always  turn  for  guidance  to  the  idealists 
like  Christ  and  Buddha  rather  than  to  the  philo- 
sophers like  Epictetus  and  Kanada.     The  garden 
of  Epicurus  has  faded  from  the  minds  of  men. 
The  garden  of  Gethsemane  will  for  ever  remain 
like  a  picture  engraved  deeply  in  their  hearts. 
Unlike  the  poet,  the  philosopher  has  no  country. 
\y^  And  seldom  is  this  so  clearly  to  be  seen  as  in  the 
^         fragment  of  Yang  Chu,  that  contains  the  essence 
of  his  philosophy.     Elaborated  and  subtilised,  it 
\A/V      forms  the  basis  for  the  Epicurean  philosophy  in 
Greece ;  in  the  calm  summit  of  its  indifference  it 
attains  the  ultimate  perfection  of  the  ego  realised 
many  centuries  later  by  Max  Stirner,  and  is  akin 
in  some  respects  to  the  Charvaka  philosophy  in 
India,  while  lacking  the  harsh  note  of  combative 
scepticism  which  leaves  the  Indian  doctrine  less 
a  philosophy  than  a  rebellion  in  thought. 


INTRODUCTION  13 

Both  philosophies  press  upon  men  the  im- 
portance of  happiness  during  life,  but  while  to 
Yang  Chu  the  study  and  cultivation  of  the  senses 
are  all,  Brihaspati  is  content  to  leave  the  expres- 
sion of  pleasure  in  a  formula  at  once  singularly 
empty,  and  tinged  with  the  indifference  and 
cynicism  of  one  to  whom  the  subject  is  really  of 
little  moment. 

While  life  remains  let  a  man  live  happily.  Let  him  feed 
on  ghee,  though  he  runs  in  debt. 

When  once  the  body  becomes  ashes,  how  can  it  ever  return 
again  ? 

The  larger  view  of  the  Chinese  philosopher  in 
reality  transcends  the  philosophy  of  Brihaspati 
by  that  quaUty  of  attention  to  and  intense  feeling 
for  life,  which  in  some  respects  brings  him  closer 
to  Epicurus,  his  truer  Western  prototype,  though 
he  accepts  no  basis  of  semi-moral  seK-interest  for 
life,  postulates  no  far-living  philosophic  deities,  and 
gives  to  man  the  solitary  satisfaction  of  his  senses, 
and  that  only  for  the  brief  space  of  his  lifetime. 

It  is  here  that  Dr.  Forke  traces  the  underlying 
pessimism  of  the  sage,  the  blackness  against 
which  are  silhouetted  the  scarlet  pleasures  of  life. 
But  this  black  pessimism  is  not  real.  It  appears 
only  in  illustration  of  the  folly  of  the  desire  for 
fame,  or  of  the  various  means  whereby  man 
closes  for  himself  the  gateways  of  happiness.  It 
is  no  part  of  his  philosophy — rather  it  is  the  anti- 
thesis.    That  he  dwells  upon  the  shortness  of  life, 


V 


14  INTRODUCTION 

that  he  upholds  no  promise  of  an  after-life,  that 
he  deprecates  the  retarding  influence  of  virtues, 
where  by  their  practice  the  full  sense  of  life  is 
dulled  and  warped,  does  not  establish  or  even 
condone  any  pessimistic  outlook  on  life  ;  on  the 
contrary,  a  full  judgment  of  life,  a  clear  sense  of 
the  futility  of  much  that  has  been  accepted  as 
praiseworthy,  would  preclude  any  philosopher 
who  has  once  accepted  the  individual  standpoint 
as  the  primary  and  important  standpoint  from 
developing  a  pessimism  which  would  absolutely 
nullify  his  philosophy.  The  keynote  of  this  philo-^y 
sophy  is  disregard  of  life,  disregard  of  death.  Those 
things  exist  and  are  to  be  accepted.  From  them 
are  to  be  taken  what  to  each  one  is  good.  Only 
strife,  insatiability,  greed,  anxiety,  false  striving 
for  virtue  or  fame,  are  to  be  avoided  as  unneces- 
sary and  disturbing.  The  primary  and  the  only 
gift  of  man  is  his  individuality.  That  is  all  that 
he  inherits,  and  with  him  it  peiishes.  It  is  for  him 
to  preserve  this  single  gift  to  the  ultimate  moment, 
neither  striving  to  exceed  nor  to  renounce.  All 
those  things  that  have  ministered  to  this  develop- 
ment of  individuality  are  good,  all  those  things 
that  have  warped  or  retarded  it  are  bad,  whether 
they  be  virtue,  the  desire  for  fame,  for  power,  for 
regulating  the  affairs  of  others,  or  the  regulation 
of  one's  own  conduct  in  conformity  with  the  views 
of  others.  By  these  things  the  lives  of  men  are 
dominated   and   rendered   unhappy.     Their   life 


INTKODUCTION  15 

,  ,  is  passed  in  a  state  of  fever.  Their  personalities 
(  Tare  warped  or  destroyed  or  rendered  miserable. 
They  pursue  chimeras,  neglecting  the  happiness 
that  lies  at  their  very  feet.  Fainting,  they  fall 
and  perish  and  are  forgotten.  The  clear  light  of 
many  days  brings  to  them  no  pleasure.  The  very 
word  pleasure  has  lost  its  meaning  for  them. 
They  take  nothing  from  life  but  disquiet  of  spirit, 
anxiety  and  discontent.  Within  each  one  are 
born  certain  desires,  certain  appetites,  certain 
wishes.  These  things  are  normal  and  natural. 
They  are  in  themselves  the  ultimate  means 
whereby  personality  is  fostered  and  preserved. 
The  philosopher,  viewing  life  clearly,  neglecting 
nothing,  fearing  nothing,  regarding  nothing,  pur- 
sues his  way.  True  to  himself,  disquiet  does  not 
touch  him.  For  him  the  simplest  pleasures  will 
suffice,  for  contentment  is  an  axiom  of  his  philo- 
sophy. Relying  absolutely  upon  his  senses,  he 
comes  to  understand  them,  and  when  in  the  end 
they  begin  to  fail  he  renounces  the  life  which  has 
become  useless  to  him,  and  with  the  sage  of  Wei 
passes  into  final  oblivion. 

This  philosophy  of  the  senses,  enunciated  by 
the  philosopher  with  a  calm,  smiling  carelessness, 
has  no  real  affinity  with  pessimism.  Naturalism 
and  sensism  may  find  in  him  certain  affinities, 
but  pessimism,  which  is  primarily  at  the  base  of 
all  religions  which  regard  the  natural  desires  and 
appetites  of  man  as  a  primary  legacy  of  a  nature 


16  INTRODUCTION 

naturally  and  originally  evil,  has  no  exponent  in 
the  sage  of  Liang,  who,  believing  in  nature  and 
taking  men  as  he  finds  them,  urges  them  faith- 
fully to  follow  their  natures  whithersoever  they 
may  lead  them. 

It  is  here  that  one  may  find  perhaps  the  real 
answer  to  the  riddle  that  has  puzzled  all  the 
students  of  the  great  exponent  of  Taoism,  Lieh 
Tzu,  in  whose  work  the  solitary  fragment  of 
Yang  Chu  is  imbedded.  v 

The  Taoist  philosophy  is  the  philosophy  of  j 
naturalism.  It  teaches  the  following  of  nature. 
Obedience  to  the  laws  of  nature  is  the  primary 
axiom  of  the  Taoist  philosophy.  Both  Yang  Chu 
and  Lieh  Tzu  start  from  the  same  point — the  close 
and  acute  study  and  observation  of  nature.  They 
postulate  existence  as  a  natural  thing,  neither 
good  nor  bad  in  itself.  To  both  thinkers  an 
accepted  morafity  is  a  hindrance. 

**  He  who  regards  as  common  property  a  body 
appertaining  to  the  universe  and  the  things  of  the 
universe  is  a  perfect  man,"  says  Yang  Chu.  And 
this  sense  of  the  oneness  and  freedom  of  nature 
is  so  distinctly  true  to  Taoist  teaching  that  one 
hesitates  to  accept  the  apparent  complete  antago- 
nism between  the  two  teachings.  The  doctrine 
of  universal  theft  from  nature  is  a  purely  Taoist 
doctrine,  where  all  things  in  nature  are  common 
property  and  all  things  are  stolen. 

We  st«al  our  very  existence  from  nature,  says 


INTRODUCTION  17 

Lieh  Tzu.  Such  thefts  are  unconscious  thefts. 
The  doctrine  of  disregard  is  also  largely  Taoist 
in  thought.  The  ideal  Taoist  minimises  desires 
and  cravings : 

"  They  followed  their  natural  instincts,  feeling  neither  joy  in 
life  nor  abhorrence  of  death.  Thus  they  came  to  no  untimely 
ends."^ 

One  may  compare  this  with  the  saying  of 
Yang  Chu  : 

"  Having  once  come  into  life,  disregard  it  and  let  it  pass,  mark 
its  desires  and  wishes  and  be  drifted  away  to  annihilation.^^ 

One  may  best  compare  the  two  teachings  by 
saying  that  Yang  Chu  is  the  naturalist  philoso- 
pher in  youth  ;  Lieh  Tzu  the  naturalist  philo- 
sopher in  old  age.  It  is  at  least  possible  that  in 
the  lost  works  of  Yang  Chu  the  link  that  binds 
him  more  closely  with  the  Taoist  doctrine  existed, 
a  link  that  would  account  for  the  inclusion  of  this 
fragment  of  his  work  in  the  book  of  Lieh  Tzu. 

It  is  only  in  actual  theory  of  conduct  as  apart 
from  metaphysical  speculation  that  the  divergence 
between  the  two  is  most  marked.  In  that  single 
sentence  dealing  with  the  oneness  and  freedom 
of  nature  we  have  the  solitary  expression  of  meta- 
physical speculation  in  the  whole  of  the  philosophy 
of  Yang  Chu,  but  that  line  of  philosophic  thought, 
one  may  conjecture,  is  either  a  solitary  exception 
or  a  clue  to  the  puzzle  that  has  perplexed  all 
students  of  Taoist  philosophy. 

^  Taoist  Teachings,  p.  38,  translated  by  L.  Giles. 
2 


18  INTRODUCTION 

But  theory  of  conduct  takes  up  practically  the 
whole  of  the  solitary  work  of  Yang  Chu  that  re- 
mains, and  it  is  this  theory  of  conduct  that  marks 
the  real  divergence  between  the  teaching  of  Yang 
Chu  and  that  of  Lieh  Tzu.  Both  viewed  all  life 
and  nature  as  it  really  exists  as  a  natural  pheno- 
menon, governed  by  certain  natural  and  un- 
avoidable laws,  and  both  drew  from  the  same 
premises  deductions  of  a  different  character. 
In  the  world  of  Yang  Chu  life  is  dominated  and 
bounded  by  the  senses.  His  philosophy  is  a  sense 
philosophy.  To  live  in  accord  with  the  senses 
man  must  renounce  nothing,  strive  for  nothing. 
All  his  conduct  must  be  guided  by  his  senses. 
Nature  is  not  perverse,  only  man  where  he  de- 
flects from  nature  is  perverse,  where  he  builds 
systems  of  anti-natural  morality,  where  he  piles 
up  useless  riches,  where  he  limits  or  destroys  the 
full  expression  of  individuahty  to  the  senses. 

So  he  evolves  a  philosophy  of  life  quite  logical 
and  quite  unmoral,  in  which  all  life  and  all  expres- 
sion of  life  are  centred  in  the  senses,  where  the 
cultivation  of  the  senses  is  the  primary  law  and 
the  gratification  of  them  by  the  simplest  means 
the  ultimate  object.  Here  at  any  rate,  whatever 
we  may  dimly  suspect,  is  no  metaphysical 
subtlety.  The  theory  is  set  before  us  so  plainly, 
so  uncompromisingly,  that  there  is  no  loophole 
for  escape.  Even  Epicurus  is  weak-kneed  beside 
the  calmly  smiling  sage  of  Liang.     Here  is  no 


INTRODUCTION  19 

philosophic  minister  to  the  senses,  no  subtle  quali- 
fication. Pleasure  is  an  actual  thing,  no  mere 
negative  phantom.  All  forms  of  pleasures  are  swept 
into  his  net.     Nothing  is  bad,  nothing  is  evil. 

"  Allow  the  ear  to  hear  what  it  likes,  the  eye  to  see  what  it  likes, 
the  nose  to  smell  what  it  likes,  the  mouth  to  say  what  it  likes, 
the  body  to  enjoy  the  comforts  it  likes  to  have,  and  the  mind  to  do 
what  it  likes. ^^ 

The  careful  study  and  cultivation  of  the  senses 
is  the  true  basis  of  egoistical  philosophy,  and  it  is 
logically  unassailable.  It  is  the  basis,  if  not  of 
much  modern  thought,  at  least  of  a  great  deal 
of  modem  action,  and  gathers  impetus  from  its 
reiterated  demand  from  all  classes  for  a  fuller, 
more  complete  individual  expression. 

Starting  from  the  same  premises,  the  Taoist 
philosopher,  who  is  essentially  a  metaphysician, 
turns  aside  and  plunges  into  the  unknowable. 
To  him  life  is  a  force,  strange,  inert,  passive,  and 
fecund,  impermeable,  intangible  and  mysterious. 
It  is  to  the  comprehension  of  this  force  that  lies 
at  the  back  of  all  natural  phenomena,  that  the 
Taoist  urges  his  disciples.  Learn  to  know  Tao 
which  is  the  way,  the  way  of  nature ;  allow  yourself 
to  drift,  to  merge  into  nature.  Desires  and  their 
satisfaction  have  no  part  in  this  philosophy. 

**  Those  who  excel  in  beauty  become  vain,  says  Lieh  Tzu. 
Those  who  excel  in  strength  become  violent.  To  such  it  is 
useless  to  speak  of  Tao,  Hence  he  who  is  not  yet  turning 
grey  will  surely  err  if  he  but  speak  of  Tao.  How  much  less 
can  he  put  it  into  practice  I" 


20  ^  INTRODUCTION 

Here  is  the  clear  dividing  line  between  the  two. 
To  Yang  Chu  the  senses  are  all,  their  satisfaction 
everything.  Youth  and  youth  alone  can  obtain 
the  full  satisfaction  that  the  senses  demand. 
With  age  comes  restraint  and  final  renunciation. 

To  the  Taoist,  without  this  restraint  and  re- 
nunciation nothing  can  be  done.  The  way  of 
Tao  is  closed.  Youth  may  not  enter  save  by 
doing  violence  to  his  natural  instincts. 

Passivity,  old  age,  introspection  belong  to  Lieh 
Tzu ;  joyousness  and  contentment  to  Yang  Chu. 

The  whole  of  his  philosophy  is  sustained  by 
this  sense  of  happiness  easily  obtained,  close  at 
hand,  a  happiness  that  is  independent  of  enforced 
and  uncongenial  labour,  deadening  the  senses 
and  turning  men  into  unwilling  beasts,  and  inde- 
pendent of  the  burden  of  riches,  which  in  them- 
selves are  a  direct  means  of  limiting  personality. 

"  Yuan  Hsien  lived  in  mean  circumstances  in  Lu,  while 
Tse  Kung  amassed  wealth  in  Wei. 

"  Poverty  galled  the  one  and  riches  caused  uneasiness  to 
the  other, 

"  So  poverty  will  not  do,  nor  wealth  either, 

"  Enjoy  life  and  take  one's  ease,  for  those  who  know  how 
to  enjoy  life  are  not  poor,  and  he  that  lives  at  ease  requires 
no  riches." 

The  philosopher  does  not  say  how  this  happy 
condition  of  life  is  to  be  brought  about.  To  him 
it  was  possibly  a  corollary  to  the  discovery  of  the 
uselessness  of  wealth  for  the  purpose  of  happi- 
ness.    There  is  no  taint  or  suspicion  of  socialism 


INTRODUCTION  21 

or  any  tyranny  limiting  or  defining  the  action  of 
individuals  ;  on  the  contrary  his  philosophy  is 
purely  individualist  and  non-authoritarian.  He 
visualises  quite  clearly  a  kind  of  golden  age,  a 
fabulous  pre-existing  period  in  the  history  of  the 
world,  where  strife  for  useless  power  and  useless 
domination  and  useless  fame  did  not  exist,  where 
a  full  knowledge  of  the  importance  of  living  so 
brief  a  life  as  happily  as  possible  alone  guided  the 
actions  of  men.  In  speaking  of  this  period  and 
contrasting  it  with  the  later  period  in  which  strife 
for  domination  and  wealth  had  reduced  men  to  the 
unhappy  condition  of  manacled  slaves,  he  says  : 

*'  The  Ancients  knew  that  all  creatures  enter  but  for  a  short 
while  into  life  and  must  suddenly  depart  in  death.  Therefore 
they  gave  way  to  their  impulses  and  did  not  check  their 
natural  propensities. 

"  They  denied  themselves  nothing  that  could  give  pleasure 
to  their  bodies  ;  consequently,  as  they  were  not  seeking  fame 
but  were  following  their  own  nature,  they  went  smoothly  on, 
never  at  variance  with  their  own  inclinations. 

"  They  did  not  seek  for  posthumous  fame.  They  never 
did  anything  criminal,  and  of  glory  and  fame,  rank  and 
position,  as  well  as  of  the  span  of  their  life,  they  took  no  heed," 

He  was  essentially  the  philosopher  of  true 
egoism  as  opposed  to  the  false  egoism  under  which 
at  his  tim^e  the  world  laboured  and  suffered — 
the  egoism  that  oversteps  the  limits  of  the  true 
care  and  cultivation  of  self  and  persists,  for  quite 
selfish  and  vain  and  frequently  petty  motives, 
in  assuming  the  care  and  control  of  others,  and 
imposing  upon  them  terms  of  slavery  and  hard- 


22  INTRODUCTION 

ship,  terms  that  limit  and  ultimately  destroy 
all  individuality,  and  reduce  men  to  the  level  of 
driven  and  unwilling  slaves. 

A  recent  writer  who  lent  for  a  brief  space  a 
certain  dignity  to  British  letters  has  pointed  out, 
quite  truly,  that  "  Selfishness  is  not  living  as  one 
wishes  to  live,  it  is  asking  others  to  live  as  one 
wishes  to  live.  And  unselfishness  is  letting  other 
people's  lives  alone,  not  interfering  with  them." 

With  this  selfishness,  which  is  simply  the  pro- 
duct of  a  stupid  and  unreasonable  vanity,  true 
egoism  has  nothing  whatever  in  common.  True 
egoism  is  essentially  unselfish.  It  suffices  for  the 
true  egoist  to  live  his  own  life.  Others  he  will  help 
and  assist  when  help  or  assistance  is  required. 

So,  in  the  words  of  Yang  Chu  : 

"  We  may  give  the  feverish  rest,  satiety  to  the  hungry,  warmth 
to  the  cold  and  assistance  to  the  miserable,*^ 

but  for  ourselves  we  must  be  content  to  live  our 
own  lives,  to  discover  for  ourselves  the  ultimate 
method  of  expression  for  which  our  lives  and 
natures  are  suited. 

That  this  final  expression  of  individuality  may 
be  what  is  called  moral,  or  what  is  called  unmoral, 
is  to  the  sage  a  matter  of  complete  indifference. 
A  certain  evenness  of  temperament,  a  certain  sense 
of  contentment  and  harmony  easily  attained,  is 
suggested  by  the  calm  and  restrained  style  of  the 
philosopher.  Alexandra  David,  in  her  interesting 
pamphlet  Les  Theories  Individualistes  Chinoises, 


INTRODUCTION  23 

speaks  of  the  influence  of  this  curious  simplicity 
of  style — "La singuliere  simplicity d'expression  de 
ce  '  negateur  du  sacre  '  " — and  the  whole  effect  of 
his  teaching  is  essentially  quietistic,  profound  and 
indifferent.  But  the  philosopher  urges  no  definite  ^  X 
course  of  conduct  or  life.  What  to  one  is  happi-  v 
ness  and  pleasure,  to  another  will  be  folly.  So 
long  as  expression,  whether  it  be  what  is  called 
moral  or  what  is  called  unmoral,  is  true  expres- 
sion, it  is  of  importance  only  to  the  individual 
concerned  what  intimate  form  it  shall  take.  All 
forms  of  pleasure  and  all  forms  of  happiness  are 
purely  relative.  The  warmth  of  the  spring  sun 
rejoices  the  heart  of  the  old  farmer  of  Sung  ; 
within  their  palaces,  in  the  province  of  Cheng, 
recline  the  profligate  brothers  of  Tse  Chan, 
gladdening  their  senses  with  delicate  wines  and 
women  of  rare  and  perfect  beauty.  Among  the 
wonderful  pavilions  at  Wei  lingers  Tuan-Mu- 
Shu,  counting  the  days  that  are  left  of  his  youth, 
when  songs  and  gaiety  shall  no  longer  endure  for 
him  ;  and  with  a  coarse  fare  of  hemp  stalks,  cress 
and  duckweed,  the  heart  of  the  peasant  of  Sung 
is  made  glad.  We  may  communicate  our  pleasures 
to  others,  we  can  never  enforce  them. 

Riches  may  increase  and  multiply  our  desires  ; 
they  cannot  add  to  our  happiness  —  they  may 
even  take  away  from  it.  It  is  only  the  things, 
few  in  number,  that  are  absolutely  necessary  and 
essential  to  life  that  are  of  any  real  importances 


24  INTRODUCTION 

And  it  is  just  those  things  for  the  lack  of  which 
most  lives  are  rendered  worthless. 

"  If  men  could  do  without  food  and  clothes  there  would  he  no 
more  kings  and  princes.^'' 

It  is  the  struggle,  in  itself  so  often  futile  and 
wasteful,  for  a  bare  and  meagre  existence  that 
limits  and  thwarts  the  development  of  person- 
ality, or  hardens  it  to  an  extent  where  it  no  longer 
becomes  worth  developing. 

One  may  condemn  or  despise  the  voluptuary. 
That  is  purely  a  question  of  aesthetics.  At 
least,  however  crude,  however  perverse  he  may 
seem,  still  he  has  in  his  lifetime  attempted  to 
express  an  individuality,  attempted  to  achieve 
some  ideal  which  to  him  appeared  worthy  of  attain- 
ment ;  but  the  man  whose  personality  is  dead, 
who  can  find  no  means  of  expression,  who  from 
hardship  or  from  success  hardly  won  has  lost  all 
that  makes  life  of  any  value  whatsoever,  is  beyond 
redemption.  Consideration  is  wasted  upon  him. 
Already  he  is  dead,  and  whether  he  be  rich  or  poor 
his  existence  is  no  longer  of  use  to  himself  and  may 
only  be  a  hindrance  to  others. 

Such  as  these,  says  the  philosopher  with  grim 
irony,  are  the  fugitives  of  life.  Whether  they  are 
killed  or  live,  their  lives  have  been  regulated  by 
externals. 

"  Urged  and  repelled  by  fame  and  laws,  they  are  constantly 
rendered  anxious  ;  so  they  lose  the  happiest  moments  of  the 
present,  and  cannot  give  way  to  their  feelings  for  one  hour." 


INTRODUCTION  25 

On  the  question  of  self-sacrifice  the  philosopher 
is  quite  clear.  Life  of  itself  is  of  no  importance, 
save  to  the  liver,  and  that  only  for  the  brief  space 
of  his  existence.  By  self-sacriiice  there  is  nothing 
to  be  gained,  save  perhaps  a  little  fame,  and  if 
this  be  at  the  expense  and  to  the  detriment  of 
personality,  it  is  a  wrong  thing  to  do.  From 
kindness  of  heart  and  a  real  desire  to  relieve 
suffering  a  man  may  dispose  of  and  give  away 
those  things  which  are  not  absolutely  essential 
to  his  existence.  But  to  himself  his  life  must  be 
sacred.  To  spoil  one's  life  for  the  sake  of  fame, 
or  because  it  is  considered  a  splendid  thing  to  do, 
is  to  commit  a  wrong  against  one's  self.  And  it 
is  equally  wrong  that  one  should  be  expected  to 
do  so.  If  the  world  requires  this  ultimate  self- 
sacrifice,  then  the  world  is  wrong  and  the  condition 
of  things  that  calls  for  this  self-sacrifice  is  wrong. 
In  a  chapter  devoted  to  quite  clear  exposition  of 
this  view,  a  chapter  which  for  its  dispassionate  con- 
tempt of  obvious  and  accepted  views  has  been  most 
singled  out  for  especial  condemnation,  Yang  Chu 
takes  the  extreme  case  of  the  sage  against  the  uni- 
verse, and  the  greater  part  of  the  chapter  is  taken 
up  with  a  justification  of  this  extreme  point  of  view. 

"  If  the  ancients,"  says  the  philosopher,  referring  to  the 
golden  age  of  his  ideal,  "  by  injuring  a  single  hair  could  have 
rendered  a  service  to  the  world  they  would  not  have  done  it, 
and  had  the  universe  been  offered  to  a  single  person  he  would 
not  have  accepted  it. 

"  As  nobody  would  damage  a  single  hair  and  nobody  would 
do  a  favour  to  the  world,  the  world  was  in  a  perfect  state." 


26  INTRODUCTION 

To  the  philosopher  self-sacrifice  is  simply  the 
corollary  of  a  wrong  and  unbalanced  condition  of 
life.  In  a  community  where  neither  fame  nor  self- 
glorification  at  the  expense  of  others  is  desired,  self- 
sacrifice  would  not  exist .   It  would  be  unnecessary . 

Where  all  are  happy  and  all  are  contented, 
there  would  be  no  need  of  either  self-sacrifice  or 
seK-aggrandisement.  That  is  a  simple  truth ; 
and  if,  by  the  adoption  of  a  false  and  selfish 
egoism  and  a  false  and  equally  selfish  racial 
egoism,  humanity  has  reached  a  point  where  self- 
sacrifice  has  become  a  good  or  desirable  thing, 
the  fault  really  lies  with  the  vanity  and  ignorance 
that  have  led  humanity  to  this  point,  and  have 
ultimately  justified  a  code  of  morals  philosophic- 
ally unreasonable  and  unnecessary. 

It  is  important  to  state  this  quite  clearly, 
because  a  superficial  and  misleading  view  of  the 
philosophic  meaning  of  this  much-abused  chapter 
has  provoked  a  number  of  commentators  to  a 
righteous  but  quite  undue  sense  of  anger,  which, 
while  possibly  justified  by  the  curious  makeshift 
view  of  modern  morals,  has  no  real  bearing  upon 
the  philosophic  position  of  the  philosopher. 

In  the  view  of  the  philosopher  the  care  of  self, 
for  the  preservation  and  expression  of  person- 
ality, is  the  primary  and  natural  duty  of  all  man- 
kind, and  where  this  natural  care  is  interfered 
with,  warped  or  thwarted,  a  condition  of  affairs 
arises  in  which  injustice,  greed  and  vanity,  in 


INTRODUCTION  27 

themselves  quite  unnecessary  things,  call  for  anti- 
dotes which  in  themselves  are  equally  unnecessary. 
And  so  the  virtues  are  born  as  antidotes  to  vices 
that  are  in  themselves  the  children  of  ignorance. 

The  rest  of  the  chapter  is  taken  up  with  a  dis- 
quisition on  the  relative  degrees  of  self-sacrifice 
which,  while  interesting  from  a  logical  point  of 
view,  is  not  of  any  particular  importance.  As  in 
the  chapter  dealing  with  the  justification  of  the 
two  happy  voluptuaries,  Yang  Chu  here  states  the 
extreme  case,  and  leaves  the  qualification  to  his 
disciples. 

A  certain  number  of  chapters,  notably  Chapters 
III.,  IV.,  VIII.,  XI.,  XIII.  and  XV.,  deal  fully  or 
in  part  with  an  exposition  of  the  conduct  of  life 
guided  by  a  philosophic  materialism,  a  material- 
ism which  is  simply  a  statement  of  fact.  Life  is  a 
natural  and  unavoidable  phenomenon.  There  is 
no  mystery  about  life,  says  the  philosopher.  We 
live  and  we  cease  to  live ;  no  matter  whether  we 
are  virtuous  or  libertine,  moral  or  immoral,  we 
share  the  same  fate  and  speedily  are  forgotten. 
In  tears  or  silence  our  personalities  perish  with 
us,  be  they  bad  or  be  they  good,  and  the  body  of 
a  saint  is  no  better  than  the  body  of  a  thief.  This 
is  simply  a  statement,  and  may  be  accepted  or 
denied.  It  can  only  be  pointed  out  that  neither 
the  earlier  Taoists,  nor  the  Confucians,  nor  the 
Buddhists,  believe  in  a  conscious  after-life,  and 
that,  assuming  as  he  does  the  ultimate  end  of  life 


■hi 


28  INTRODUCTION 

to  be  a  final  and  unavoidable  thing,  the  philosopher 
is  controverting  no  current  belief  of  his  period. 
All  deductive  philosophy  must  invariably  concern 
itself  with  facts,  and  to  those  facts  and  by 
them  all  philosophy  is  limited.  Whether  man 
be  a  single  expression  of  Tao,  the  highest  form  as 
yet  evolved,  his  destiny  is  bounded  by  his  life. 
Beyond,  we  know  nothing.  If  we  did,  if  we  were 
certain,  all  philosophy,  all  speculation,  possibly  all 
religion,  would  cease.  A  thousand  guesses  at  the 
life  motive  may  be  made  ;  all  are  uncertain,  all 
are  speculative.  Alone  the  philosopher,  satisfied 
with  the  knowable,  strives  to  present  existence  as 
at  least  something  that  may  mth  care  be  ren- 
dered a  little  happy,  a  little  less  uncertain,  or  a 
little  more  worthy  of  the  desire  to  live,  which  is 
the  primary  instinct  of  animals  and  men.  If  he 
pursues  happiness,  if  he  pursues  seK-sacrifice,  if 
he  pursues  tears,  or  if  he  pursues  power  and  the 
vast  aggrandisement  of  the  super-man,  or  remains, 
like  the  Taoist  quiescent,  submerged  in  life  and 
content,  at  least  he  surveys,  from  one  among  the 
many  windows  in  the  tower  of  philosophy,  a  land 
where  something  better,  something  finer  or  at 
least  something  less  miserable  is  being  done  ; 
where  the  harshness  and  striving  of  life  come  to 
him  like  a  distant  echo  of  some  old  drama  ill- 
played  and  no  longer  worth  recording,  or  a  mist 
that  has  suddenly  lifted  and  taken  with  it  the 
vanities  and  unhappiness  of  men. 


INTRODUCTION  29 

Philosophy  can  bring  no  further  knowledge  of 
life.  It  can  but  alter  the  terms  by  which  life  is 
known.  In  whatever  terms  we  regard  it,  life 
remains  the  same  ;  and  so  it  is  that  the  materialist 
philosopher,  disregardful  of  all  purely  speculative 
things,  realising  that  the  unknowable  will  for 
all  time  remain,  is  concerned  solely  with  the 
guidance  of  mankind  to  his  Utopia,  where  in 
the  silence  of  his  thought,  men  encompass  a  little 
happiness  in  their  lives  and,  having  achieved  this, 
prepare  uncomplaining  to  depart. 

This  is  the  real  strength  of  the  materialist  posi- 
tion that,  having  once  proclaimed  life  as  a  final 
and  unenduring  thing,  the  philosopher  must  turn 
to  the  consideration  of  what  makes  most  for 
happiness  in  men's  lives,  and  if  in  his  opinion 
happiness  is  only  to  be  gained  by  the  senses,  it 
follows  that  all  life  will  lead  to  the  cultivation  and 
perfecting  of  these  senses  as  a  means  whereby 
this  happiness  may  be  most  easily  and  perfectly 
obtained.  A  sense  of  beauty  will  ultimately  take 
the  place  now  occupied  by  vanity  and  aggression, 
because  man,  through  the  guidance  of  his  senses, 
must  ultimately  desire  what  is  beautiful ;  that  is, 
he  will  begin  by  desiring  what  is  actually  neces- 
sary, then  what  is  comfortable,  and  finally  what 
is  beautiful.  A  true  cultivation  of  the  senses 
can  never  degrade  mankind.  It  is  only  by  not 
cultivating  or  even  by  thwarting  and  limiting  the 
senses  that  man  becomes  degraded.    It  is  quite 


30  INTRODUCTION 

true  that  coarse  natures  will  require  coarse 
pleasures.  These  are  always  obtainable — too 
easily  obtainable. 

In  dealing  with  the  question  of  coarse  pleasures 
Yang  Chu  does  not  say  that  drink  is  in  itself  a 
good  or  desirable  thing,  or  that  love  of  women 
carried  to  excess  is  a  laudable  and  commendable 
thing.  What  he  says  is  that  all  inclinations,  how- 
ever gross,  however  indefensible,  are  preferable 
to  the  perverse  inclination  for  interference  with 
others,  for  rule,  for  power  and  authority.  It  is 
possible  for  a  man  to  ruin  his  health  by  over- 
indulgence. By  lust  for  power  and  command 
he  may  ruin  the  life  of  a  whole  nation.  But  a 
civilisation  that  pursues  and  cultivates  happiness 
will  ultimately  raise  the  ideal  of  pleasure.  Riches, 
useless  display,  orgies,  self -aggrandisement  at  the 
expense  of  others,  personal  or  racial  aggressive- 
ness, greed,  vanity  and  insatiability  —  all  the 
things  that  make  life  a  thing  of  torment,  a  curtain 
of  black  which  the  faint  light  of  a  few  virtues 
can  only  faintly  illumine — will  ultimately  be 
assessed  at  their  true  value.  It  will  be  discovered 
that  happiness  can  be  obtained  by  the  most  simple 
of  means.  Men  will  begin  to  use  their  senses  or 
at  least  to  try  and  understand  them  a  little,  and  so, 
each  in  his  separate  way,  will  aim  at  the  happiness 
that  lies  most  surely  and  easily  at  his  hand. 

That  is  the  materialist  Utopia.  It  is  the  final 
word  of  materialist  philosophy. 


INTRODUCTION  31 

Beyond  the  solitary  chapter  in  the  book  of  Lieh- 
Tzu,  which  contains  all  that  remains  of  the  teaching 
of  Yang  Chu,  there  are,  scattered  through  the  book 
of  Lieh-Tzu  and  the  book  of  Chuang-Tzu,  a  few 
possibly  authentic  tales  and  anecdotes  attributed 
to  the  philosopher  of  Liang  and  illustrative  of  his 
teaching.  These  with  one  exception  have  already 
been  included  in  two  recently  published  works  on 
the  Taoist  Philosophers/  and  may  be  omitted 
from  the  present  work. 

The  single  anecdote  referred  to  may  be  given 
here,  as  it  illustrates  in  a  singularly  happy  fashion 
the  smiling  scepticism  of  the  sage  to  whom  in 
life  the  one  final  and  certain  thing  is  death. 

The  neighbour  of  Yang  Chu  once  lost  a  sheep. 

He  began  to  search  for  it  with  all  his  kinsfolk,  and  asked 
assistance  also  from  the  servants  of  Yang  Chu,  who  in  as- 
tonishment said  : 

"  Oh,  oh  !  why  do  you  require  such  a  large  number  of 
persons  to  seek  for  a  single  lost  sheep  ?  " 

The  neighbour  replied  : 

"  There  are  many  crossways  to  pursue  and  search  out." 

On  his  return  he  was  asked  if  he  had  found  his  sheep, 
and  replied  that  he  had  given  up  the  search. 

Yang  Chu  asked  him  why  he  had  given  up  the  search. 

The  neighbour  answered : 

"  Among  the  crossways  there  were  a  great  many  small 
diverging  tracts.  Not  knowing  which  to  follow  I  gave  up 
the  search  and  returned," 

Yang  Chu  became  pensive  and  wrapped  in  thought.  For 
a  whole  day  he  neither  smiled  nor  spoke. 

*  Musings  of  a  Chinese  Mystic,  by  Lionel  Giles,  M,A,  Taoist 
Teachings,  by  Lionel  Giles,  M,A,  John  Murray,  "Wisdom  of 
the  East  Series." 


32  INTRODUCTION 

His  disciples,  astonislied  at  his  attitude,  asked  him  the 
reason,  saying  : 

"  A  sheep  is  an  animal  of  little  value  ;  furthermore  this 
one  did  not  belong  to  you,  Master.  Why  does  its  loss  disturb 
your  usual  amiable  hvmiour  and  gaiety  ?  " 

Yang  Chu  mewie  no  answer. 

His  disciples  were  unable  to  understand  the  significance 
of  his  silence,  and  Meng-Sun-Yang  went  out  and  asked  Hsin- 
tu-tse  on  the  subject. 

Another  day  Hsin-tu-tse  accompanied  by  Meng-Sun- 
Yang  came  to  Yang  Chu  and  asked  him  saying  : 

"  Once  three  brothers  travelled  through  the  Provinces  of 
Chi  and  Lu. 

"  They  were  instructed  under  the  same  master  and  had 
studied  the  doctrine  of  humanity  and  justice. 

"  When  they  came  to  their  father's  house  their  father  asked 
them  what  was  the  final  conclusion  they  had  arrived  at  in 
regard  to  the  doctrine  of  humanity  and  justice. 

'*  The  one  answered  : 

"  '  The  study  of  humanity  and  justice  teaches  me  to  love  and 
respect  my  body,  and  to  consider  of  less  importance  what 
makes  for  fame  and  glory.' 

"  The  second  said  : 

"  '  The  study  of  humanity  and  justice  teaches  me  to  sacri- 
fice my  body  in  order  to  obtain  fame  and  glory.' 

•'  The  third  said  : 

"  *  The  study  of  humanity  and  justice  teaches  me  to  dis- 
cover a  method  of  conciliating  the  desire  of  my  body  and  the 
desire  for  fame.' 

"  These  three  contradictory  theories  arise  from  the 
teaching  of  the  same  master.  Which  of  them  is  true  ?  which 
is  false  ?  " 

Yang  Chu  said  : 

"  There  was  once  a  man  who  lived  on  the  banks  of  the 
river.  He  had  a  perfect  knowledge  of  river  lore,  and  was  an 
expert  swimmer.  He  was  boatman  of  his  state  and  gained  his 
living  managing  his  boat. 

"  His  gains  were  considerable  and  would  provide  for  the 
maintenance  of  a  hundred  persons. 

"  Those  who  desired  instruction  under  his  direction  came 
to  him  bringing  a  sack  of  grain  and  became  his  pupils. 


INTRODUCTION  33 

"  Quite  half  among  them  drowned  themselves. 

"  In  coming  to  him  they  had  the  intention  of  learning  to 
swdm,  and  not  of  drowning  themselves.  In  the  end  the  suc- 
cesses and  failures  were  equal  (since  half  learnt  to  swim  and 
half  were  drowned). 

"  Which  among  them  do  you  thinlc  were  right,  and  which 
were  wrong  ?  " 

Hsin-tu-tse  kept  silence.  But  Meng-Sun-Yang  took  him 
up  saying  : 

"  Well,  is  this  not  right  ?  It  is  because  your  question  was 
put  in  so  vague  a  fashion  that  the  answer  of  the  Master  is  so 
evasive.   Meanwhile  I  am  in  a  greater  darkness  than  before." 

Hsin-tu-tse  replied  : 

"  Because  the  large  roads  divide  into  innumerable  small 
pathways  and  tracks  the  sheep  was  lost. 

"  The  aspects  of  wisdom  being  multiplied,  many  students 
lose  themselves.  It  does  not  matter  if  at  the  beginning  all 
start  from  the  same  aspect  of  wisdom,  there  are  always  diver- 
gencies at  the  end. 

"  The  single  thing  that  re-establishes  equality  is  death 
and  the  annihilation  of  personality  at  death. 

"It  is  indeed  pitiable  that  you,  an  ancient  disciple  of  the 
Master  and  a  student  of  the  Master's  doctrine,  should  not 
comprehend  the  meaning  of  his  parables." 

Here,  with  all  the  grace  and  charm  of  a  humour 
that  is  quite  peculiar  to  the  materialist  sage  of 
Liang,  Yang  Chu  points  out  that  with  one  basis 
to  all  philosophies  the  rest  is  entirely  a  question 
of  personality — that  from  the  solid  premises  of 
life,  thought,  and  all  the  phenomena  of  existence, 
innumerable  deductions  may  be  drawn,  all 
diverging,  all  opposed,  all  false  and  all  true.  What 
remains  when  the  din  and  the  shouting  have 
died  away  is  the  solitary  fact  that  we  live  and  we 
die,  and  whether  we  live  comfortably  or  uncom- 
fortably, whether  we  do  good  or  ill,  whether  we 

3 


34  INTRODUCTION 

achieve  happiness  or  unhappiness,  whether  we 
pursue  wisdom  or  achieve  the  pleasure  of  the 
moment,  is  a  matter  of  absolute  unimportance  ; 
the  end  comes  and  forgetfulness  swallows  us  up. 
At  the  most  we  may  look  back  regretfully  upon 
a  few  quite  happy  days,  and  memory  may  bring 
us  a  transient  and  ephemeral  sense  of  happiness. 
These  are  the  things  we  have  gamed  from  life,  the 
things  that  are  hidden  away  in  the  secret  drawer 
of  the  treasure -chest  of  our  life,  the  single  true  and 
perfect  expression  of  personahty  that  the  fates 
and  human  selfishness  have  allowed  us. 

The  sheep  of  the  neighbour  of  Yang  Chu  are 
still  lost  amid  the  thousand  branching  pathways 
of  thought  and  the  wisdom  of  conflicting  philo- 
sophies. Life  still  remains  the  simple  thing  that 
man  has  made  so  complex,  and  the  ideal  of  life 
is  still  the  ideal  of  happiness,  and  to  each  one 
happiness  must  come  with  different  features  and  in 
a  different  guise.  Alone  we  are  sure  of  this,  that 
it  was  happiness  that  touched  us,  and  to  that 
moment  of  happiness  all  our  lives  have  led  up ; 
and  here  the  philosopher  draws  down  the  heavy 
curtain  of  death.  Life  should  be  happy,  says  he, 
if  men  made  happiness  their  business.  If  it  is 
unhappy  it  is  because  men  search  for  other  things, 
and  so  their  lives  are  unhappy. 

If  men  desired  happiness  for  themselves  they 
would  be  content  with  the  happiness  that  the 
senses  afforded  them.     That  they  struggle,  that 


INTRODUCTION  35 

they  rob  and  slay  and  maim,  may  be  a  survival 
of  the  old  tradition  of  aboriginal  times,  the  tradi- 
tion of  bloodshed,  rapine  and  self-aggrandise- 
ment, when  expression  found  its  only  vent  in 
slaughter  and  violence ;  but  the  pursuit  of  happi- 
ness solitary  and  profound  and  yet  strangely 
simple,  is,  to  the  philosopher,  the  ultimate  and 
final  end  that  men  should  pursue  when  they  have 
shaken  off  the  old  fetters  of  pride  and  arrogance 
of  race  or  personality,  and  the  Scales  have  fallen 
from  their  eyes.  For  life  at  best  can  afford  but 
happiness,  and  to  all  death  comes  alike,  and  no 
philosophy,  however  transcendent,  however  fine, 
can  alter  this  solitary  and  immutable  law  of  life. 
Happiness  from  simple  means  in  life  and  death 
to  end  it  all  is  the  basis  of  the  philosophy  of  Yang 
Chu.  You  cannot  avoid  life,  and  the  pursuit  of 
wisdom  avails  not  to  close  the  final  doorway. 
All  wisdom,  like  all  happiness,  is  relative.  In  life 
you  must  achieve  your  own  happiness.  Neither 
wisdom,  nor  virtue,  nor  wrong-doing,  nor  gain  at 
the  expense  of  others  can  help  you.  Alone  and 
unaided  you  must  pursue  the  way  of  your  own 
happiness,  a  happiness  that  can  be  rarely  com- 
municated and  still  more  rarely  shared.  The 
final  solution  of  happiness  must  come  through 
you.    Let  it  suffice  for  you.  H.  C.-B. 

Note. — The  author  is  indebted  to  Professor  Anton  Forke 
for  his  permission  to  use  his  translation  of  Yang  Chu  which 
appeared  in  the  Journal  of  the  Peking  Oriental  Society. 


CHAPTER   I 

THE   VANITY   OF  FAME 

Yang  Chu,  when  travelling  in  Lu,  put  up  at 
Meng  Sun  Yang's. 

Meng  asked  him  :  "A  man  can  never  be  more 
than  a  man  ;  why  do  people  still  trouble  them- 
selves about  fame  ?  " 

Yang  Chu  answered  :  "If  they  do  so  their 
object  is  to  become  rich." 

Meng  :  "  But  when  they  have  become  rich, 
why  do  they  not  stop  ?  " 

Yang  Chu  said :  "  They  aim  at  getting 
honours." 

Meng  :  "  Why  then  do  they  not  stop  when  they 
have  got  them  ?  " 

Yang  Chu  :   "On  account  of  their  death." 

Meng  :  "  But  what  can  they  desire  still  after 
their  death  ?  " 

Yang  Chu  :    "  They  think  of  their  posterity." 

Meng  :  "  How  can  their  fame  be  available  to 
their  posterity  ?  " 

Yang  Chu  :  "  For  fame's  sake  they  endure  all 
kinds  of  bodily  hardship  and  mental  pain.  They 
dispose  of  their  glory  for  the  benefit  of  their  clan, 
and  even  their  fellow-citizens  profit  by  it.  How 
much  more  so  do  their  descendants !     Howbeit 

36 


THE    VANITY    OF    FAME  37 

it  becomes  those  desirous  of  real  fame  to  be  dis- 
interested, and  disinterestedness  means  poverty; 
and  likewise  they  must  be  unostentatious,  and 
this  is  equivalent  to  humble  condition." 

How  then  can  fame  be  disregarded,  and  how 
can  fame  come  of  itself  ? 

The  ignorant,  while  seeking  to  maintain  fame, 
sacrifice  reality.  By  doing  so  they  will  have  to 
regret  that  nothing  can  rescue  them  from  danger 
and  death,  and  not  only  learn  to  know  the  differ- 
ence between  ease  and  pleasure  and  sorrow  and 
grief. 

CHAPTER   II 

REAL  AND  FALSE  GREATNESS 

Yang  Chu  said  : 

"  Kuan  Ching  filled  his  post  as  a  minister  of 
Ch'i  in  the  following  way.  When  his  sovereign 
was  wanton  he  was  wanton  too  ;  when  his  sove- 
reign was  prodigal  he  was  also  prodigal.  He  met 
his  wishes  and  obeyed  him  ;  following  the  right 
path,  he  made  the  kingdom  prosper.  But  after 
the  king's  death,  he  was  only  Mr.  Kuan  again. 
Nothing  more. 

"  But  when  Tien  was  minister  of  Ch'i  he  behaved 
as  follows.  When  his  sovereign  was  overbearing 
he  was  condescending.  When  his  sovereign  col- 
lected taxes  he  distributed  money.  Thus  the 
people    admired    him,    and    in    consequence    he 


38      REAL   AND   FALSE    GREATNESS 

entered  into  the  possession  of  the  kingdom  of 
Ch'i.     His  descendants  hold  it  to  this  day.^ 

"  If  an3^body  has  real  greatness  he  is  poor  ; 
if  his  greatness  is  spurious,  he  is  rich." 

Yang  Chu  said  : 

*'  The  really  good  man  is  not  famous  ;  if  he  be 
famous,  he  is  not  really  a  good  man,  for  all  fame 
is  nothing  but  falsehood. 

"  Of  old  Yao  and  Shun  pretended  to  yield  the 
empire  to  Hsu-yn  and  Shan-Chuan,  but  they  did 
not  lose  it,  and  enjoyed  happiness  for  a  hundred 
years. 

"  Po  Yo  and  Shu-Ch'i  really  abdicated  on 
account  of  the  Prince  Ku-Chu,  and  lost  their 
kingdom  at  last,  finally  dying  of  starvation  on  the 
mountain  of  Shou-Yang.* 

"This  is  the  difference  between  the  real  and 
false." 

CHAPTER   III 

THE   BREVITY   OF   CONSCIOUS  LIFE 

Yang  Chu  said : 

"  One  hundred  years  is  the  limit  of  a  long  life. 

1  Kuan  Chang  died  645  b.o.  Tien  became  King  of  Ch'i 
370  B.C. 

*  The  Prince  of  Ku-Chu,  the  father  of  these  two  brothers, 
had  appointed  the  younger  brother  Shu-Ch'i  to  be  his  suc- 
cessor. The  latter  not  wishing  to  deprive  his  brother,  and 
the  former  not  desiring  to  act  against  his  father's  will,  both 
left  the  principality  and  died  in  poverty. 


THE  BREVITY  OF  CONSCIOUS  LIFE     39 

Not  one  in  a  thousand  ever  attains  to  it.  Yet  if 
they  do,  still  unconscious  infancy  and  old  age 
take  up  about  half  this  time. 

"  The  time  he  passes  unconsciously  while 
asleep  at  night,  and  that  which  is  wasted  though 
awake  during  the  day,  also  amounts  to  another 
half  of  the  rest.  Again  pain  and  sickness,  sorrow 
and  fear,  fill  up  about  a  half,  so  that  he  really  gets 
only  ten  years  or  so  for  his  enjoyment.  And 
even  then  there  is  not  one  hour  free  from  some 
anxiety. 

"  What  then  is  the  object  of  human  life  ?  What 
makes  it  pleasant  ?  Comfort  and  elegance,  music 
and  beauty.  Yet  one  cannot  always  gratify  the 
desire  for  comfort  and  elegance  nor  incessantly 
enjoy  beauty  and  music. 

"  Besides,  being  warned  and  exhorted  by 
punishments  and  rewards,  urged  forward  and 
repelled  by  fame  and  laws,  men  are  constantly 
rendered  anxious.  Striving  for  one  vain  hour  of 
glory  and  providing  for  the  splendour  which  is 
to  survive  their  death,  they  go  their  own  solitary 
ways,  analysing  what  they  hear  with  their  ears 
and  see  with  their  eyes,  and  carefully  considering 
what  is  good  for  body  and  mind  ;  so  they  lose 
the  happiest  moments  of  the  present,  and  cannot 
really  give  way  to  these  feelings  for  one  hour. 

"  How  do  they  really  differ  from  chained 
criminals  ? 

"  The  Ancients  knew  that  all  creatures  enter 


40    THE  BREVITY  OF  CONSCIOUS  LIFE 

but  for  a  short  while  into  life,  and  must  suddenly 
depart  in  death.  Therefore  they  gave  way  to 
their  impulses  and  did  not  check  their  natural 
propensities. 

"  They  denied  themselves  nothing  that  could 
give  pleasure  to  their  bodies ;  consequently,  as 
they  were  not  seeking  fame,  but  were  following 
their  own  nature,  they  went  smoothly  on,  never 
at  variance  with  their  inclinations.  They  did  not 
seek  for  posthumous  fame.  They  neither  did 
anything  criminal,  and  of  glory  and  fame,  rank 
and  position,  as  well  as  of  the  span  of  their  life 
they  took  no  heed." 


CHAPTER   IV 

DEATH  THE   EQUALISER 

Yang  Chu  said  : 

*'  That  in  which  all  beings  differ  is  life,  that  in 
which  they  are  all  alike  is  death. 

*'  During  life  there  is  the  difference  of  intelli- 
gence and  dullness,  honour  and  meanness,  but 
in  death  there  is  the  equality  of  rottenness  and 
putrefaction.  Neither  can  be  prevented.  Al- 
though intelligence  and  dullness,  honour  and 
meanness  exist,  no  human  power  can  affect  them, 
just  as  rottenness  and  putrefaction  cannot  be 
prevented.     Human  beings  cannot  make  life  and 


DEATH    THE    EQUALISER  41 

death,  intelligence  and  stupidity,  honourableness 
and  meanness,  what  they  are,  for  all  beings  live 
and  die  equally,  are  equally  wise  and  stupid, 
honourable  and  mean. 

*'  Some  die  at  the  age  of  ten,  some  at  one 
hundred.  The  wise  and  benevolent  die  as  the 
cruel  and  imbecile. 

^'  In  life  they  are  known  as  Yao  and  Shun  ^ ; 
dead  they  are  so  many  bones  which  cannot  be 
distinguished.  But  if  we  hasten  to  enjoy  our 
life,  we  have  no  time  to  trouble  about  what  comes 
after  death." 


CHAPTER  V 

FALSE   VIRTUES 

Yang  Chu  said  : 

"  Po  Yi  was  not  without  desire,  for  being  too 
proud  of  his  purity  of  mind,  he  was  led  to  death 
by  starvation. 

"  Chan-Chi  ^  was  not  passionless,  for  being  too 
proud  of  his  virtue  he  happened  to  reduce  his 
family. 

"  Those  who  in  pursuit  of  purity  and  virtue  do 
good  in  a  false  way  resemble  these  men." 

1  Yao  and  Shiin,  the  two  model  emperors  of  antiquity. 

^  Chan-Chi.  The  proper  name  of  Fui-hsia-hui,  an  official 
in  the  state  of  Lu,  famous  for  his  continence,  which  prevented 
him  from  getting  children,  so  that  he  reduced  his  family. 


42  THE  IDEAL  LIFE 

CHAPTER    VI 

THE  IDEAL  LIFE 

Yang  Chu  said  : 

'*  Yuan  Hsie  lived  in  mean  circumstances  in 
Lu,  while  Tse  Kung  ^  amassed  wealth  in  Wei. 

"  Poverty  galled  the  one,  and  riches  caused  un- 
easiness to  the  other. 

"  So  poverty  will  not  do  nor  wealth  either." 

''  But  what  then  will  do  ?  " 

"  I  answer  enjoy  life  and  take  one's  ease,  for 
those  who  know  how  to  enjoy  life  are  not  poor, 
and  he  that  lives  at  ease  requires  no  riches." 

CHAPTER    VII 

DUTY  TO  THE  LIVING  AND  THE  DEAD 

Yang  Chu  said  : 

"There  is  an  old  saying,  'We  must  pity  the  living 
and  part  with  the  dead.'    This  is  a  good  saying. 

"  Pity  does  not  merely  consist  in  an  imusual 
feeling. 

"So  we  may  give  the  feverish  rest,  satiety  to 
the  hungry,  warmth  to  the  cold,  and  assistance  to 
the  miserable ;  but  for  the  dead,  when  we  have 
rightly  bewailed  them,  to  what  use  is  it  to  place 
pearls  and  jewels  in  their  mouths,  or  to  dress  them 
in  state  robes,  or  offer  animals  in  sacrifice,  or  to 
expose  effigies  of  paper  ?  " 

1  Tse  Kiuig  was  a  disciple  of  Confucius. 


THE    ART    OF    LIFE  43 

CHAPTER   VIII 

THE   ART   OF  LIFE 

Yen  -  Ping  -  Chung  asked  Kuan-Yi-Wu^   as  to 
cherishing  life. 

Kuan-Yi-Wu  replied  : 

"  It  suffices  to  give  it  its  free  course,  neither 
checking  nor  obstructing  it." 

Yen-Ping-Chung  said  :    "  And  as  to  details  ?  " 

Kuan-Yi-Wu  replied  :  "  Allow  the  ear  to  hear 
what  it  likes,  the  eye  to  see  what  it  likes,  the  nose 
to  smell  what  it  likes,  the  mouth  to  say  what  it 
likes,  the  body  to  enjoy  the  comforts  it  likes  to 
have,  and  the  mind  to  do  what  it  likes. 

*'  Now  what  the  ear  likes  to  hear  is  music,  and 
the  prohibition  of  it  is  what  I  call  obstruction  to 
the  ear. 

"  What  the  eye  likes  to  look  at  is  beauty  ;  and 
its  not  being  permitted  to  regard  this  beauty  I 
call  obstruction  of  sight. 

*'  What  the  nose  likes  to  smell  is  perfume  ;  and 
its  not  being  permitted  to  smell  I  call  obstruction 
to  scent. 

"What  the  mouth  likes  to  talk  about  is  right 
and  wrong ;  and  if  it  is  not  permitted  to  speak  I 
call  it  obstruction  of  the  understanding. 

"  The  comforts  the  body  enjoys  to  have  are 
rich  food  and  fine  clothing ;  and  if  it  is  not  per- 

1  Both  famous  statesmen  of  antiquity  in  the  service  of  the 
dukes  of  Chi. 


44  THE   ART    OF   LIFE 

mitted,  then  I  call  that  obstruction  of  the  senses 
of  the  body. 

"  What  the  mind  likes  is  to  be  at  peace  ;  and 
its  not  being  permitted  rest  I  call  obstruction  of 
the  mind's  nature. 

"All  these  obstructions  are  a  source  of  the 
most  painful  vexation. 

"  Morbidly  to  cultivate  this  cause  of  vexation, 
unable  to  get  rid  of  it,  and  so  have  a  long  but 
very  sad  life  of  a  hundred,  a  thousand,  or  ten 
thousand  years,  is  not  what  I  call  cherishing  life. 

"  But  to  check  this  source  of  obstruction  and 
with  calm  enjoyment  to  await  death  for  a  day,  a 
month,  or  a  year  or  ten  years,  is  what  I  under- 
stand by  enjoying  life." 

Kuan-Yi-Wu  said  : 

"  Since  I  have  told  you  about  cherishing  life, 
please  tell  me  how  it  is  with  the  burial  of  the 
dead." 

Yen-Ping-Chmig  said  : 

"  Burying  the  dead  is  but  of  very  little  import- 
ance.    What  shall  I  tell  you  about  it  ?  " 

Kuan-Yi-Wu  replied  : 

"  I  really  wish  to  hear  it." 

Yen-Ping-Chung  answered  : 

"  What  can  I  do  when  I  am  dead  ?  They  may 
bum  my  body,  or  cast  it  into  deep  water,  or  inter 
it,  or  leave  it  uninterred,  or  throw  it  wrapped  up 
in  a  mat  into  some  ditch,  or  cover  it  with  princely 
apparel  and  embroidered  garments  and  rest  it  in 


THE   ART    OF    LIFE  45 

a  stone  sarcophagus.  All  that  depends  on  mere 
chance." 

Kuan-Yi-Wu  looked  round  at  Pao-Shu-huang- 
tse  and  said  to  him  : 

"  Both  of  us  have  made  some  progress  in  the 
doctrine  of  life  and  death." 

CHAPTER    IX 

THE  HAPPY   VOLUPTUARIES 

Tse-Chan  was  Minister  in  Cheng,  and  governed 
for  three  years,  and  governed  well.^ 

The  good  people  complied  with  his  injunctions, 
and  the  bad  were  in  awe  of  his  prohibitory  laws. 

So  Cheng  was  governed,  and  the  princes  were 
afraid  of  it. 

Tse-Chan  had  an  elder  brother,  Kung-Sun- 
Chow,  and  a  younger,  Kung-Sun-Mu.  The  former 
was  fond  of  feasting  and  the  latter  of  gallantry. 

In  the  house  of  Kung-Sun-Chow  a  thousand 
barrels  of  wine  were  stored,  and  yeast  in  piled-up 
heaps. 

Within  a  hundred  paces  from  the  door  the 
smell  of  drugs  and  liquor  offended  people's  noses. 

He  was  so  much  under  the  influence  of  wine 
that  he  ignored  the  feeling  of  remorse,  was  un- 
conscious of  the  safe  and  dangerous  parts  of  the 
path  of  life  ;   what  was  present  or  wanting  in  his 

^  The  famous  minister  of  Cheng,  Kung-sun-chiao,  who 
lived  about  B.C.  550. 


46  THE   HAPPY   VOLUPTUARIES 

house,  the  near  or  remote  degrees  of  relation- 
ship,* the  various  degrees  of  relationship,  the 
joy  of  living  and  the  sadness  of  death. 

Water,  fire  and  swords  might  almost  touch 
his  person,  and  he  would  be  unaware  of  it. 

Within  the  house  of  Kung-Sun-Mu  there  was  a 
compound  of  about  thirty  or  forty  houses,  which 
he  filled  with  damsels  of  exquisite  beauty.  So 
much  was  he  captivated  by  their  charms,  that  he 
neglected  his  relatives  and  friends,  broke  off  all 
family  intercourse,  and  retiring  into  his  inner 
court  turned  night  into  day 

Within  three  months  he  only  came  forth  once, 
and  yet  he  still  did  not  feel  contented. 

Was  there  a  pretty  girl  in  the  neighbourhood, 
he  would  try  to  win  her  with  bribes  or  allure- 
ments, and  only  desisted  with  the  impossibility 
of  obtaining  his  desires. 

Tse-Chan  pondering  over  these  things,  stealthily 
betook  himself  to  Teng-hsi  to  consult  him,  and 
said  : 

"I  have  heard  that  the  care  for  one's  own 
person  has  its  influence  on  the  family,  and  the 
care  taken  of  a  family  influences  the  state.  That 
is  to  say,  starting  from  the  nearest  one  reaches 
to  what  is  distant.  I  have  taken  care  of  my 
kingdom,  but  my  own  family  is  in  disorder.  Per- 
haps this  way  is  not  the  right  one.     What  am  I 

*  The  nine  degrees  of  relationship  are  counted  from  the 
great-great-grandfather  to   the  great-great-grandson. 


THE   HAPPY   VOLUPTUARIES  47 

to  do  ?  what  measures  am  I  to  take  to  save  these 
two  men  ?  " 

Teng-hsi  replied  : 

"  I  have  wondered  for  a  long  while  at  you. 
But  I  did  not  dare  to  speak  to  you  first.  Why 
do  you  not  always  control  them  ?  Administer 
exhortations  based  on  the  importance  of  life  and 
nature,  or  admonitions  regarding  the  sublimity 
of  righteousness  and  proper  conduct." 

Tse-Chan  did  as  Teng-hsi  had  advised,  and 
taking  an  opportunity  of  seeing  his  brothers  said 
to  them  : 

"  That  in  which  man  is  superior  to  beasts  and 
birds  are  his  mental  faculties.  Through  them  he 
gets  righteousness  and  propriety,  and  so  glory  and 
rank  fall  to  his  share.  You  are  only  moved  by 
what  excites  your  sense,  and  indulge  only  in 
licentious  desires,  endangering  your  lives  and 
natures. 

"  Hear  my  words.  Repent  in  the  morning, 
and  in  the  evening  you  will  have  already  gained 
the  wage  that  will  support  you." 

Chow  and  Mu  said  : 
•    '""Long  ago  we  knew  it  and  made  our  choice. 

*'  Not  had  we  to  wait  for  your  instructions  to 
enlighten  Ub. 

"  It  is  very  difficult  to  preserve  life,  and  easy  to 
come  by  one's  death.  Yet  who  would  think  of 
awaiting  death,  vhich  comes  so  easily,  on  account 
of  the  difficulty  if  preserving  life  ? 


48        THE   HAPPY   VOLUPTUARIES 

"  You  value  proper  conduct  and  righteousness 
in  order  to  excel  before  others,  and  you  do 
violence  to  your  feelings  and  nature  in  striving 
for  glory.  That  to  us  appears  to  be  worse  than 
death. 

"  Our  only  fear  is  lest,  wishing  to  gaze  our  fill 
at  all  the  beauties  of  this  one  life,  and  to  exhaust 
all  the  pleasures  of  the  present  years,  the  reple- 
tion of  the  belly  should  prevent  us  from  drinking 
what  our  palate  delights  in,  or  the  slackening  of 
our  strength  not  allow  us  to  revel  with  pretty 
women. 

"  We  have  no  time  to  trouble  about  bad  repu- 
tations or  mental  dangers.  Therefore  for  you 
to  argue  with  us  and  disturb  our  minds  merely 
because  you  surpass  others  in  ability  to  govern, 
and  to  try  and  allure  us  with  promises  of  glory 
and  appointments,  is  indeed  shameful  and  de- 
plorable. 

"  But  we  will  now  settle  the  question  with  you. 

"  See  now.  If  anybody  knows  how  to  regulate 
external  things,  the  things  do  not  of  necessity 
become  regulated,  and  his  body  has  still  to  toil 
and  labour.  But  if  anybody  knows  how  to 
regulate  internals,  the  things  go  on  all  right,  and 
the  mind  obtains  peace  and  rest. 

"  Your  system  of  regulating  external  things 
will  do  temporarily  and  for  a  single  kingdom, 
but  it  is  not  in  harmony  with  the  humap  i»a*rt, 
while  our  method  of  regulatmg  interpals  can  be 


THE    HAPPY   VOLUPTUARIES  49 

extended  to  the  whole  universe,  and  there  would 
be  no  more  princes  and  ministers. 

"  We  always  desired  to  propagate  this  doctrine 
of  ours,  and  now  you  would  teach  us  yours." 

Tse-Chan  in  his  perplexity  found  no  answer. 

Later  on  he  met  and  informed  Teng-hsi. 

Teng-hsi  said  : 

''  You  are  living  together  with  real  men  without 
knowing  it. 

"  Who  calls  you  wise  ?  Ch-eng  has  been  governed 
by  chance,  and  without  merit  of  yours." 

CHAPTER    X 

THE   JOYOUS  LIFE   OF  TUAN-MU-SHTJ 

Tuan-mu-Shu  of  Wei  was  descended  from  Tse- 
Kung. 

He  had  a  patrimony  of  ten  thousand  gold 
pieces. 

Indifferent  to  the  chances  of  life,  he  followed 
his  own  inclinations. 

What  the  heart  delights  in  he  would  do  and 
delight  in  :  with  his  walls  and  buildings,  pavilions, 
verandahs,  gardens,  parks,  ponds  and  lakes,  wine 
and  food,  carriages,  dresses,  women  and  attend- 
ants, he  would  emulate  the  princes  of  Chi  and 
Chu  in  luxury. 

Whenever  his  heart  desired  something,  or  his 
ear  wished  to  hear  something,  his  eye  to  see  or  his 

4 


60  THE  JOYOUS  LIFE  OF  TUAN-MU-SHU 

mouth  to  taste,  he  would  procure  it  at  all  costs, 
though  the  thing  might  only  be  had  in  a  far-off 
country,  and  not  in  the  kingdom  of  Chi. 

When  on  a  journey  the  mountains  and  rivers 
might  be  ever  so  difficult  and  dangerous  to  pass, 
and  the  roads  ever  so  long,  he  would  still  proceed 
just  as  men  walk  a  few  steps. 

A  hundred  guests  were  entertained  daily  in  his 
palace.  In  the  kitchens  there  were  always  fire 
and  smoke,  and  the  vaults  of  his  hall  and  peristyle 
incessantly  resounded  with  songs  and  music. 
The  remains  from  his  table  he  divided  first  among 
his  clansmen.  What  they  left  was  divided  among 
his  fellow- citizens,  and  what  these  did  not  eat 
was  distributed  throughout  the  whole  kingdom. 

When  Tuan-mu-Shu  reached  the  age  of  sixty, 
and  his  mind  and  body  began  to  decay,  he  gave 
up  his  household  and  distributed  aU  his  treasures, 
pearls  and  gems,  carriages  and  dresses,  concu- 
bines and  female  attendants.  Within  a  year  he 
had  disposed  of  his  fortune,  and  to  his  offspring 
he  had  left  nothing.  When  he  fell  ill,  he  had  no 
means  to  buy  medicines  and  a  stone  lancet,  and 
when  he  died,  there  was  not  even  money  for  his 
funeral.  All  his  countrymen  who  had  benefited 
by  him  contributed  money  to  bury  him,  and  gave 
back  the  fortune  of  his  descendants. 

When  Ch'in-ku-li  ^  heard  of  this  he  said  : 

^  Ch'in-ku-li  is  said  to  have  been  a  pupil  of  the  philosopher 
Me  Ti. 


THE  JOYOUS  LIFE  OF  TUAN-MU-SHU  51 

"  Tuan-mu-Shu  was  a  fool,  who  brought  dis- 
grace to  his  ancestor." 
When  Tuan-Kan-Sheng  heard  of  it  he  said  : 
"  Tuan-mu-Shu  was  a  wise  man  ;  his  virtue 
was  much  superior  to  that  of  his  ancestors.  The 
commonsense  people  were  shocked  at  his  con- 
duct, but  it  was  in  accord  with  the  right  doctrine. 
The  excellent  man  of  Wei  only  adhered  to  pro- 
priety.    They  surely  had  not  a  heart  like  his." 


CHAPTER   XI 

THE  FOLLY   OF   DESIRE   FOR  LONG  LIFE 

Meng-sun-Yang  asked  Yang  Chu  : 

* '  There  are  men  who  cherish  life  and  care 
for  their  bodies  with  the  intention  of  grasping 
immortality.     Is  that  possible  ?  " 

Yang  Chu  replied  : 

"  According  to  the  laws  of  nature  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  immortality." 

Meng-sun-Yang  :  "  Yet  is  it  possible  to  ac- 
quire a  very  long  life  ?  " 

Yang  Chu  :  "According  to  the  laws  of  nature 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  very  long  life.  Neither 
can  life  be  preserved  by  cherishing  or  the  body 
benefited  by  fostering." 

Meng-sun-Yang:  "What  would  be  a  long 
life  ?  " 

"  All  things  were  the  same  as  they  are  now. 


52    FOLLY  OF  DESIRE  FOR  LONG  LIFE 

The  five  good  and  bad  passions  were  of  old  as  they 
are  now.  So  also  the  safety  and  peril  of  the  four 
limbs.  Grief  and  joy  for  the  things  of  this  world 
were  of  old  as  they  are  now,  and  the  constant 
change  of  peace  and  revolution.  Having  seen  and 
heard  all  these  things,  one  would  already  be 
awearied  of  it  at  the  age  of  a  hundred.  How 
much  more  after  a  very  long  life !  " 

Meng-sun-Yang  :  "If  it  be  so  a  sudden  death 
would  be  preferable  to  a  long  life  ;  therefore  we 
ought  to  run  on  to  a  pointed  sword  or  jump  into 
deep  water  to  have  what  our  heart  yearns  for." 

Yang  Chu  :  "No.  Having  once  come  into  life, 
regard  it  and  let  it  pass  ;  mark  its  desires  and 
wishes,  and  so  wait  death. 

"  When  death  comes,  disregard  it  and  let  it 
come.  Mark  what  it  brings  you,  and  be  drifted 
away  to  annihilation. 

"  If  you  pay  no  regard  to  life  and  death,  and 
let  them  be  as  they  are,  how  can  you  be  anxious 
lest  our  life  should  end  too  soon  ?  " 


CHAPTER    XII 

SELF-SACRIFICE  AND   SELF-AGGRANDISEMENT 

Yang  Chu  said  : 

"  Po-cheng-tse-kao  ^  would  not  part  with  a  hah' 
of  his  body  for  the  benefit  of  others.     He  quitted 

*  Po-cheng-tse-kao  was  a  Taoist  of  the  time  of  Yao. 


SELF-SACRIFICE  53 

his  country  and  became  a  ploughman.  The 
great  Yii  ^  did  not  profit  by  his  own  body,  which 
grew  quite  emaciated. 

"  If  the  ancients  by  injuring  a  single  hair  could 
have  rendered  a  service  to  the  world,  they  would 
not  have  done  it ;  and  had  the  universe  been 
offered  to  a  single  person,  he  would  not  have 
accepted  it. 

"As  nobody  would  damage  even  a  hair,  and 
nobody  would  do  a  favour  to  the  world,  the  world 
was  in  a  perfect  state." 

Ch'in-Tse  asked  Yang  Chu  : 

"If  by  pulling  out  a  hair  of  your  body  you 
would  aid  mankind,  would  you  do  it  ?  " 

Yang  Chu  answered  : 

"  Mankind  is  surely  not  to  be  helped  by  a 
single  hair." 

Ch'in-Tse  said  : 

"  But  supposing  it  possible,  would  you  do  it  ?  " 

Yang  Chu  gave  no  answer. 

Thereupon  Ch'in-Tse  told  Meng-sun-Yang,  who 
replied  : 

"  I  will  explain  the  Master's  meaning. 

"  Supposing  for  tearing  off  a  piece  of  your  skin 
you  were  offered  ten  thousand  gold  pieces,  would 
you  do  it  ?  " 

Ch'in-Tse  said  : 

"I  would." 

1  The  great  Yii,  the  controller  of  the  great  flood,  which  ta«k 
so  occupied  him  that  he  entirely  forgot  his  own  wants. 


54  SELF-SACRIFICE 

Meng-sun-Yang  again  asked  : 

*'  Supposing  for  cutting  off  one  of  your  limbs 
you  were  to  get  a  kingdom,  would  you  do  it  ?  " 

Ch'in-Tse  was  silent. 

"  See  now,"  said  Meng-sun-Yang.  *'  A  hair  is 
unimportant  compared  with  the  skin,  and  the 
skin  also  is  unimportant  compared  with  a  limb. 

"  However,  many  hairs  put  together  form  a 
skin,  and  many  skins  form  a  limb.  Therefore, 
though  a  hair  is  but  one  among  the  many 
molecules  composing  the  body,  it  is  not  to  be 
disregarded." 

Ch'in-Tse  replied  : 

"  I  do  not  know  how  to  answer  you.  If  I  were 
to  ask  Lao-tse  and  Kuan- Yin, ^  your  opinion, 
would  be  found  right,  and  so  also  if  I  were  to 
consult  great  Yii  and  Me-ti." 

Meng-sun-Yang  upon  this  turned  round  to  his 
disciples,  and  spoke  of  something  else. 

CHAPTER  XIII 

THE   VANITY  OF  REPUTATION 

Yang  Chu  said  : 

"  The  world  praises  Shun^Yu,  Duke  Chow, 
and  Confucius,  and  condemns  Chieh  and  Chow. 
Now  Shun  had  to  plough  in  Ho-yar.g  and  to 
burn  tiles  in  Lei-tse.     His  four  limbs  had  no 

*  The  Taoist  philosopher. 


THE    VANITY   OF   REPUTATION        55 

rest,  and  rich  food  and  warm  clothing  were 
unknown  to  him. 

"  His  parents  and  his  kinsfolk  did  not  love 
him,  and  his  brothers  and  sisters  did  not  bear 
him  affection. 

"  In  his  thirtieth  year  he  was  obliged  to  marry- 
without  telling  his  parents. 

"  When  he  received  the  empire  from  Yao 
he  was  already  an  old  man  and  his  mental 
powers  were  declining.  His  son  Shang-Chun 
having  no  talents,  he  left  the  imperial  dignity 
to  Yii.     Still  he  had  to  toil  and  slave  till  he  died. 

"  Of  all  mortals  he  was  the  most  pitiable 
and  miserable. 

"  Kun's  services  in  regulating  the  water  and 
earthworks  being  impracticable,  he  was  put 
to  death  on  Mount  Yu  Shan. 

'*  Yii,  his  son,  continued  his  task,  served  his 
enemy,  and  spent  all  his  energy  on  the  earth- 
works. When  a  son  was  born  to  him  he  could 
not  take  him  in  his  arms,  nor  in  passing  his 
door  did  he  enter.  His  whole  body  became 
withered,  his  hands  and  feet  hardened  by  toil. 
When  Shun  yielded  the  empire  to  him  he  still 
lived  in  a  small  house  and  wore  only  an  elegant 
sash  and  a  coronet.  He  also  had  to  toil  and 
slave  till  he  died.  Of  all  mortals  he  was  the 
most  overworked  and  fatigued. 

"When  King  Yii  died  Cheng  was  still  of  tender 
age,  and  Duke  Chow  became  Prince  Regent. 


}^ma^  Wic  (-^J 


66      THE    VANITY    OF    REPUTATION 

"  The  Duke  of  Chow  was  dissatisfied,  and 
spread  evil  rumours  about  Chow  throughout  the 
empire.  Chow  stayed  three  years  in  the  east, 
caused  his  elder  brother  to  be  beheaded  and 
his  younger  to  be  banished,  and  nearly  lost  his 
own  life.     Till  he  died  he  had  to  toil  and  slave. 

"  Of  all  mortals,  he  was  the  most  menaced  and 
terrorised. 

"  Confucius  was  well  acquainted  with  the 
principles  of  the  old  emperors.  He  accepted  the 
invitations  of  the  princes  of  his  time.  But  a 
tree  was  felled  over  him  in  Sung  and  his  foot- 
prints were  wiped  out  in  Wei.  In  Shang  and 
Chow  he  came  to  distress,  was  assaulted  in  Chen 
and  Tsai,  humiliated  by  Chi  and  insulted  by 
Yang-hu. 

"  Till  he  died  he  had  to  toil  and  slave. 

"  Of  all  mortals  he  was  the  most  harassed  and 
worried. 

"  All  these  four  sages,  while  alive,  had  not  one 
day's  pleasure,  and  after  their  death  a  reputation 
lasting  many  years. 

"  Yet  reputation  cannot  bring  back  reality. 

"  You  praise  them  and  they  do  not  know  it, 
and  you  honour  them  and  they  are  not  aware  of 
it.  There  is  now  no  distinction  between  them 
and  a  clod  of  earth. 

"  Chieh  availed  himself  of  the  wealth  of  many 
generations,  and  attained  to  the  honour  of  facing 
south    as   king.    His  wisdom   was   sufficient  to 


THE   VANITY   OF   REPUTATION      57 

restrain  his  many  subjects,  and  his  power  great 
enough  to  shake  the  land  within  the  four  seas. 
He  indulged  in  what  was  agreeable  to  his  eyes 
and  ears,  and  fulfilled  his  heart's  desires.  He  was 
gay  and  merry  till  death. 

"  Of  all  mortals  he  was  the  most  reckless  and 
dissipated. 

*'  Chow  also  availed  himself  of  the  wealth  of 
many  generations,  and  became  King. 

"  Everything  yielded  to  his  will. 

"Abandoning  himself  to  his  desires  through 
the  long  night,  he  indulged  in  debauchery  in  his 
seraglio.  Nor  did  he  embitter  his  life  with  pro- 
priety and  righteousness. 

' '  He  was  merry  and  gay  till  he  was  put  to  death. 

"  Of  all  mortals  he  was  the  most  licentious  and 
extravagant. 

"  These  two  villains  while  alive  took  delight 
in  following  their  own  inclination  and  desires,  and 
after  death  were  called  fools  and  tyrants.  Yet 
reality  is  nothing  that  can  be  given  by  reputation. 

"  Ignorant  of  censure  and  unconscious  of  praise, 
they  differed  in  no  respect  from  the  stump  of  a 
tree  or  a  clod  of  earth. 

"  The  four  sages,  though  objects  of  admiration, 
were  troubled  up  to  their  very  end,  and  were 
equally  and  alike  doomed  to  die. 

"  The  two  villains,  though  detested  and  hated 
by  many,  remained  in  high  spirits  up  to  the  very 
end,  and  they  too  were  equally  doomed  to  die." 


68  EASE   OF   GOVERNMENT 

CHAPTER    XIV 

DIFFICULTY  AND   EASE   OF  GOVERNMENT 

Yang  Chu  had  an  audience  with  the  King  of 
Leang. 

Yang  Chu  said  :  "To  govern  the  world  is  as 
easy  as  to  turn  round  the  palm  of  the  hand." 

The  King  of  Leang  said  : 

"  You  have  a  wife  and  a  concubine,  Master, 
but  are  unable  to  govern  them.  You  have  a 
garden  of  three  acres,  but  are  unable  to  weed  it. 
How  then  can  you  say  that  governing  the  world 
is  like  turning  round  the  palm  of  the  hand.' 

Yang  Chu  said  : 

"  Observe,  your  Majesty,  the  shepherds.  One 
allows  a  boy  only  five  feet  high  to  shoulder  a  whip 
and  drive  a  hundred  sheep.  He  wants  them  to 
go  eastward,  and  they  obey  him,  or  westward, 
and  they  obey  him.  Now  let  Yao  drag  a  sheep, 
and  Shen  follow  with  a  whip,  and  they  will  never 
advance  a  yard.  Fishes  that  swallow  ships  do 
not  enter  into  small  rivers. 

"  Wild  geese  that  soar  on  high  do  not  Hght  on 

low  marshes,  but  are  borne  over  in  their  flights. 

The  notes  C  and  Cis  do  not  harmonise  with  brisk 

and  lively  airs,  for  the  sound  is  too  different. 

\\  Thus  a  man  who  manages    important  matters 

n  does  not  trouble  himself  about  trifles.     And  he 

'•■  ]  who  accomplishes  great  deeds  does  no  small  ones. 

That  was  my  meaning." 


ALL   THINGS    PASS  59 

CHAPTER    XV 

ALL  THINGS  PASS 

Yang  Chu  said  : 

"  The  memory  of  things  of  highest  antiquity 
is  faded.  Who  recollects  them  ?  Of  the  time  of 
the  three  generations  of  Emperors  ^  something  is 
preserved,  but  the  rest  is  lost.  Of  the  five  rulers  * 
something  is  still  known,  the  rest  is  only  guessed 
at.  Of  the  events  during  the  time  of  the  three 
emperors '  some  are  veiled  in  deep  obscurity, 
and  some  are  clear,  yet  out  of  a  hundred  thousand 
not  one  is  recollected.  Of  the  things  of  our  pre- 
sent life  some  are  heard,  others  seen,  yet  not  one 
out  of  ten  thousand  is  recollected.  It  is  im- 
possible to  calculate  the  number  of  years  elapsed 
from  remote  antiquity  to  the  present  day.  Only 
from  Fw-hsi  downwards  there  are  more  than 
three  hundred  thousand  years. 

"  Every  trace  of  intelligent  and  stupid  men, 
of  the  beautiful  and  ugly,  successful  and  unsucces- 
ful,  right  and  wrong,  is  effaced.  And  whether 
quickly  or  slowly  is  the  only  point  of  difference.     . 

"  If  anybody  cares  for  one  hour's  blame  or  praise  ?  | 

^  The  three  generations  of  Emperors,  namely,  those  of 
heaven,  those  of  the  earth,  and  the  human  emperors,  forming 
the  first  fabulous  epoch  of  Chinese  history. 

2  The  five  rulers  are  Fw-hsi,  Shen-nung,  Huang- ti,  Yao  and 
Shun. 

^  The  three  emperors  are,  Yii,  T'ang  and  Wen-Wang,  the 
foimders  of  the  first  three  dynasties. 


60  ALL  THINGS    PASS 

//  so  much  that,  by  torturing  his  spirit  and  body,  he 
l\   struggles  for  a  name  lasting  some  hundred  years 
i   after  his  death,  can  the  halo  of  glory  revive  his 
\|  dried  bones,  or  give  it  back  the  joy  of  living  ?  " 

CHAPTER    XVI 

THE  NATURE   OF  MAN 

Yang  Chu  said  : 

"  Men  resemble  heaven  and  earth  in  that  they 
cherish  five  principles.^  Of  all  creatures,  man 
is  the  most  skilful.  His  nails  and  teeth  do  not 
sufiice  to  procure  him  maintenance  and  shelter. 
His  skin  and  sinews  do  not  suffice  to  defend  him  ; 
though  running  he  cannot  attain  profit  nor  escape 
harm,  and  he  has  neither  hair  nor  feathers  to 
protect  him  from  the  cold  and  heat.  He  is  thus 
compelled  to  use  things  to  nourish  his  nature, 
to  rely  on  his  intelligence,  and  not  to  put  his 
confidence  in  brute  force  ;  therefore  intelligence 
is  appreciated  because  it  preserves  us  and  brute 
force  despised  because  it  encroaches  upon  things. 

"  But  I  am  not  the  owner  of  my  own  body,  for 
I,  when  I  am  bom,  must  complete  it,  nor  do  I 
possess  things,  for  having  got  them,  I  must  part 
with  them  again.  The  body  is  essential  for  birth, 
but  things  are  essential  for  its  maintenance. 

1  The  moral  life  of  men  is  based  on  five  principles  (virtues), 
benevolence,  uprightness,  propriety,  knowledge,  and  good 
faith. 


THE   NATURE    OF   MAN  61 

*'  If  there  were  a  body  born  complete  I  could 
not  possess  it,  and  I  could  not  possess  things  not 
to  be  parted  with.  For  possessing  a  body  or 
things  would  be  unlawfully  appropriating  a  body 
belonging  to '  the  whole  universe,  and  appropri- 
ating things  belonging  to  the  universe  which  no 
sage  would  do. 

*'  He  who  regards  as  common  property  a  body 
appertaining  to  the  universe  and  the  things  of  the 
universe  is  a  perfect  man. 

"  And  that  is  the  highest  degree  of  perfection." 

CHAPTER    XVII 

THE    FOUR    CHIMERAS 

Yang  Chu  said  : 

"There  are  four  things  which  do  not  allow 
people  to  rest  : 

"  Long  life.     Reputation.     Rank.     Riches. 

"  Those  who  have  them  fear  ghosts,  fear  men, 
power,  and  punishment.  They  are  always  fugi- 
tives. Whether  they  are  killed  or  live  they  regulate 
their  lives  by  externals. 

"  Those  who  do  not  set  their  destiny  at  defiance 
do  not  desire  a  long  life,  and  those  who  are  not 
too  fond  of  honour  do  not  desire  reputation. 

"  Those  who  do  not  want  power  desire  no  rank. 

"  Those  who  are  not  avaricious  have  no  desire 
for  riches. 

*'  Of  this  sort  of  men  it  may  be  truthfully  said 


62  THE   FOUK   CHIMERAS 

that  they  live  in  accordance  with  their  nature. 
In  the  whole  world  they  have  no  equal. 

"They  regulate  their  life  by  inward  things. 

"  There  is  an  old  proverb  which  says  : 

"Without  marriage  and  an  official  career  a 
man  would  be  free  from  half  of  his  yearnings. 

*'  If  men  could  do  without  clothes  and  food 
there  would  be  no  more  kings  or  subjects." 

CHAPTER    XVIII 

ALL  PLEASURES  ARE  RELATIVE 

A  COMMON  saying  of  the  Chow  time  is  : 

"  Can  a  husbandman  sit  down  and  rest  ? 

"  At  dawn  he  sets  out,  and  at  night  returns. 

**  This  he  considers  the  perpetual  course  of 
human  nature. 

"  He  eats  coarse  fare,  which  seems  to  him  to 
be  great  delicacies.  His  skin  and  joints  are  rough 
and  swollen,  and  his  sinews  and  joints  thickened 
and  swollen.  If  he  could  live  for  one  day  clothed 
in  smooth  furs,  in  a  silken  tent,  and  eat  meat  and 
millet,  orchids  and  oranges,  he  would  grow  sick 
at  heart  and  his  body  would  grow  weak  and  his 
interior  fire  cause  him  to  faU  ill. 

"If  on  the  other  hand  the  Prince  of  Shang  or 
Lu  were  to  try  to  cultivate  the  land  like  the  farmer 
it  would  not  be  long  before  they  would  both  be 
utterly  worn  out.     Yet  each  one  says  :    In  the 


ALL   PLEASURES   ARE   RELATIVE     63 

world  there  is  nothing  better  than  these  our  com- 
forts and  delights. 

"  There  was  one  old  farmer  of  Sung  who  never 
wore  anything  else  than  coarse  hempen  clothes  ; 
even  for  the  winter  he  had  no  others.  In  spring, 
when  cultivating  the  Jand,  he  warmed  himself  in 
the  sunshine. 

"  He  did  not  know  that  there  were  such  things 
as  large  mansions  and  winter  apartments,  brocade 
and  silk,  furs  of  fox  and  badger  in  the  world. 

' '  Turning  one  day  to  his  wife  he  said  : 

*'  People  do  not  know  how  pleasant  it  is  to  have 
warm  sunshine  on  the  back.  I  shall  communicate 
this  to  our  prmce,  and  I  am  sure  to  get  a  rich  present. 

"A  rich  man  of  the  village  said  to  him  :  '  Once 
there  was  a  man  fond  of  big  beans,  hemp-stalks, 
cress  and  duckweed.  He  told  the  village  elder  of 
them.  The  village  elder  tasted  them,  and  they 
burnt  his  mouth  and  gave  him  pains  in  his  stomach. 

"  Everybody  laughed,  and  was  angry  with  the 
man,  who  felt  much  ashamed. 

"Such  a  man  do  you  resemble."  i 

CHAPTER    XIX 

THE   WISDOM   OF  CONTENTMENT 

Yang  Chu  said  : 

"  How  can  a  body  possessing  the  four  things, 
a    comfortable    house,    fine  clothes,  good    food,      >m^ 
and  pretty  women,  still  long  for  anything  else  ?  \ 


64     THE   WISDOM    OF   CONTENTMENT 

He  who  does  so  has  an  insatiable  nature,  and 
insatiableness  is  a  worm  that  eats  body  and  mind. 

"  Loyalty  cannot  set  the  sovereign  at  ease,  but 
perhaps  may  imperil  one's  body;  Righteousness 
cannot  help  the  world,  but  perhaps  may  do  harm 
to  one's  life.  The  sovereign's  peace  not  being 
brought  about  by  loyalty,  the  fame  of  the  loyal 
dwindles  to  nothing,  and  the  world  deriving  no 
profit  from  righteousness,  the  fame  of  the  righteous 
amounts  to  nought. 

"  How  the  sovereign  and  subjects  can  alike  be 
set  at  ease,  and  how  the  world  and  I  can  simul- 
taneously be  helped,  is  set  forth  in  the  dictum 
of  the  ancients." 

Yu  Tse '  said  : 

"  He  who  renounces  fame  has  no  sorrow." 

Lao  Tse  said  : 

"  Fame  is  the  follower  of  reality.  Now,  how- 
ever, as  people  pursue  fame  with  such  frenzy — 
does  it  not  really  come  of  itself  if  it  is  disregarded  ? 
At  present  fame  means  honour  and  regard.  Lack 
of  fame  brings  humbleness  and  disgrace.  Again, 
ease  and  pleasure  follow  upon  honour  and  regard. 
Sorrow  and  grief  attend  humbleness  and  disgrace. 
Sorrow  and  grief  are  contrary  to  human  nature  ; 
ease  and  pleasure  are  in  accord  with  it.  These 
things  have  reality." 

1  Yu  Tse,  a  philosopher  reputed  to  have  Hved  B.C.  1250. 
Printed  by  Hazell,  Watson  &  Viney,  Ld.,  London  and  Aylesbury. 


— ^^    gssi^y 


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